Unanswered Prayers
by SparklingTwilight
Summary: Prayers are funny things. I used to think mine fell on deaf ears.     -Rated M for mature language-
1. Chapter 1

**_AN: I'm baaaaack! LOL For those of you who have followed my previous stories and have noticed my lack of presence in the fandom in recent months, I assure you I have NOT been abducted by aliens nor have I tripped into a wormhole that transported me to some parallel dimension. Life's just been crazy, but in my absence I've cooked up a short little novella for you all. It's already completely written, just needs some editing and polishing, so you can expect fairly quick updates. Please keep in mind that this is a novella - something I've never done before - so to keep things moving toward the end, the chapters are pretty quick paced. I hope you enjoy it! _**

_Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight. We all know who does, and she's fab._

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><p>Have you ever been driving along in your car, taking a shower or cleaning your house while listening to music, and a song comes on that makes you think of someone in your past? Someone you haven't seen, or spoken to since god knows when; it's just been <em>that<em> long that you can't even begin to bother calculating the days, weeks, years even, since you've last heard their voice or saw their friendly face?

I have. It happens often, actually.

Any time I hear "Kiss Me" by the Six Pence None the Richer, I think of Jessica Stanley and the way she'd belt the lyrics at the top of her lungs while we cruised around town in her convertible Volkswagen Rabbit, each and every time she started crushing on some new guy. The memory makes me smile.

If I hear "Gettin' Jiggy Wit It" by Will Smith, I crack up thinking of the way Mike Newton used to drop everything and dance any time it came on the radio. He wasn't a stranger to pulling over to the side of the road, cranking up the volume, and letting his freak flag fly right there out in the open where passersby would gawk and laugh as they drove on.

There are songs that make me think of Angela Weber, Tyler Crowley, Emily Young, Lauren Mallory, and Ben Cheney; all some of my very best friends back in my junior high and high school days. There are even some that allow me to remember, somewhat fondly, Jared Miller, Eric Yorkie , and Connor Bradley—boys who at one point or another in grade school I'd crushed on, but in later years had developed a profound repulsion of.

But there's only one song, to this very day, that doesn't bring with it a sense of nostalgic happiness, but rather, the unanswerable question of: What if?

In 1998, K-ci and JoJo topped the charts with "All My Life". Couples all around my high school the following year dropped their former 'couple' songs, and adopted the hit love song as their new one; it was all the rage. I remember thinking it was cute, but couldn't understand the hype of it...

That was, until the boy I'd been crushing on for practically my entire life—my best friend, and neighbor, Jacob Black—left a recorded tape of the song on my doorstep, along with a dozen beautiful roses and a note that detailed how long he'd been in love with me, but was afraid I'd stop being his best friend if I didn't feel the same. He'd left it for me... _me_, Isabella Marie Swan who had lived next door to him our entire lives, had run around with him wearing nothing but pampers when we were toddlers, eaten dirt at age seven in a fit of rebellion because he'd dared me to and called me a chicken because I was afraid I'd get sick, cried on his shoulder at age ten when my parents got divorced and my mom moved to Phoenix—and again three years later when some stupid boy broke my heart for the first time, _and_, embarrassingly enough, had thrown up in his lap the very first time I ever got drunk at a beach party. He knew every one of my deepest, most embarrassing secrets, hell, he'd been in attendance for most of them, and yet, he still loved me enough to want me to be his girl.

To this very day, I wonder what could have been if my life hadn't been turned upside down that very same day.

We'd had a few short months left until school let out for the summer, and it was supposed to be one of the best summers of our lives; the summer before Senior year. I'd been psyched for all the bonfires and beach parties we'd had planned and local concerts we'd wanted to go to.

I never got to experience any of it.

While my best friends, and boyfriend for all of a few short hours, lived life up the way I wished I could have been doing, I'd found myself spending the end of my Junior year and following summer in Phoenix with my father, taking care of my sickly mother. I remember being livid at her in the beginning for the burden she was placing on our shoulders, for walking out on us without ever looking back or having a second thought, and yet, having the audacity to expect us to do what she _chose_ not to—devote ourselves to her. But then, my father came home from the hospital and said words that shattered my entire world.

_"Bells... she has cancer, baby."_

I spent the entire summer waiting on her hand and foot, bringing her to doctor's appointments and doing what I could to help her when the chemo made her sick to her stomach and too weak to move from the bed on her own. On her better days, I tried to take advantage of every moment I had with her, because I never knew when, or if, it would come to a sudden end.

After I first moved, I kept in contact with everyone nearly every day. I'd lose myself in their happy tales and bits of juicy gossip, allowing myself to escape for minutes, sometimes an hour, at a time. As the months wore on, though, the calls, e-mails, and letters started to become few and far between. The end of my Junior year came and went, as did the following summer, and before I knew it, I was approaching graduation... alone.

At the beginning of my Senior year, my father packed up and went back to Forks. He'd claimed he needed to return to try and sell the house and tie up any loose ends up there before returning, but I knew he wouldn't come back; not to stay, anyway. I could see it in his eyes; watching her slowly dwindle away to near nothing was killing him. It was killing me, too, but she was my mother, and whether or not she'd ever been the best one didn't matter because she was the only one I'd ever have. He'd given me the choice to go with him, but I just couldn't. Deep down, he'd known all along that I wouldn't be able to leave her behind. When he'd gone, I'd never expected him to just _never_ return, but he never did.

The summer after graduation, I heard from my friends only a handful of times. I didn't begrudge them for it; they were busy getting ready to head off to college and start the next chapter in their lives. I thought of them frequently, and wished the best for them, but, admittedly, during some of my weaker moments when things at home were just too much to handle, I wondered if they ever thought about me, too, or if they even gave a damn. There were times when I questioned how strong our friendships truly were, or how genuine Jacob's feelings had been. It was hard not to with how often we'd all told each other we'd be "besties forever" and that, no matter what, we'd always be there for one another. Yet, in the never ending saga of crises my life had become, they were nowhere to be found.

I'd called Jessica once, not long after she'd started college somewhere in California, and she'd told me it wasn't a good time; she had a biology midterm the next day that she was nowhere near prepared for. Meanwhile, I sat in an ICU waiting room, terrified that the next doctor that walked through the doors would be coming to tell me that my mother was no longer alive. Jess didn't have a clue about what it meant to not be prepared for something. I'd had over a year to prepare myself for that moment, and still, I wasn't. I wasn't anywhere near ready to hear those words.

I stopped calling most of them after that. The only one who kept in touch for a while longer was Jacob. It wasn't often, but every once in a while he'd call to see how my mother was doing, how _I_ was doing, but as the following year came to a close, even those few calls had stopped. I hadn't even noticed it at first; the calls came so far apart that they caught me with surprise when they did come. But one night after collapsing in my bed, exhausted from the emotionally trying day of feeding my mother through a tube, cleaning her, and making sure I changed her position in bed frequently so she wouldn't get bed sores, I realized I couldn't even remember what _month_ it had been when I'd last heard his voice. It was then that I finally broke down completely. I was no stranger to crying myself to sleep by that point, but the sobs that had wracked my chest and shook my entire frame that night were something wholly unlike the silent streams that typically led me into slumber—where I could dream of living a different life, one full of friends and fun and a future that I could look forward to.

I was alone; utterly and completely alone. I hadn't made any friends in high school during the last month and a half of my Junior year, or the entirety of my Senior one. I wasn't one of the popular kids like I'd been in Forks. I wasn't one of the "in crowd"; I wasn't even one of the "not-so-in-crowd, in crowds". I was nobody; just a faceless person drifting in a sea of people my own age that were just as unfamiliar to me as I was to them. There were no jokes shared at the lunch table, notes passed in classes, or invites to parties or outings. There was only the occasional "_can I borrow a pen?_" or "_can I copy your notes from yesterday?_"

I'd fallen asleep that night wishing that I would never wake up, that I could stay in my dreams for all eternity, but it wasn't granted. It seemed as though none of my prayers during that time were ever answered. In the months that followed, I slipped further and further into a funk of depression. I'd been abandoned, at one point or another, by each and every person in my life that had ever claimed to love me; first my mother, then my father, then all of my friends. It left me routinely questioning my own self worth. What was so wrong with me that everyone in my life could leave me behind without a care in the world? What had I ever done that was so wrong that I didn't deserve to be able to live the life I'd spent my adolescence dreaming of? To find love and happiness, have friends and fun and a career, and maybe one day, even a family of my own?

Sometime during the third year, my father called to tell me he was getting married. I think it was then, during that phone call as I tried to tell him I was happy for him when really all I wanted to do was scream and pray that someone would hear me and save me from the hell my life had become, that I just shut down. I stopped hoping to make new friends, or get back in touch with old ones. I stopped dreaming of one day living the life full of sunshine and rainbows that I'd spent years foolishly believing were in my grasp. And, many, many long months later when they told me that, despite their best efforts, the cancer had spread throughout nearly my mother's entire body, I finally stopped praying they'd be able to cure her, too. I simply wished for, and desired... nothing. Absolutely _nothing_.

I returned home from the hospital with my mother that night and quietly cried as I sat beside her bed, holding onto her hand that had once been warm and soft but had withered down to nothing more than paper thin skin and brittle bone. She couldn't speak anymore, hadn't been able to for quite some time with how weak she'd become, but every now and then her fingers would twitch, trying to grasp my hand in return and I'd look up into her eyes and see sadness lingering there. Sadness not for herself or the prognosis she'd been given, but for me as she'd mouth the words _I'm sorry_, and _I love you_.

The doctors couldn't give us an answer as to how much time she'd have left; it could have been days, weeks, or even months they'd said with how well she was being cared for by me. As I sat there, I realized I had just as few answers for my own life as they had for hers. I didn't know where I'd go, or what I'd do after she passed. There was nothing left for me in Forks, my father had moved on with his new family, and my friends had all moved away from what I knew. Once my mother passed on, there wasn't going to be anything left for me to live for in Phoenix either.

I was twenty-one years old, had no roots to keep me grounded, and no system of support in place to help see me through the darkest of my days as I had done for my mother. Where I'd once been filled with excitement for what my future possibly held, and ambition to see my dreams come to fruition, sitting beside her in her final days, long after those hopes and dreams had vanished, I was filled with nothing but dread and uncertainty for what fate held in store for me.

It was a Tuesday morning in the beginning of May, just three and a half weeks after my mother's final prognosis was given, that I awoke to find she'd passed away in her sleep. It's hard to describe what I'd felt as the county coroner arrived to officially pronounce her as deceased, followed closely behind by the funeral home to take her body away. I was heartbroken that my time with her had come to an end, but part of me was relieved. She'd deteriorated rapidly over the last few weeks, the alertness that had always remained in her eyes fading away as she struggled harder to just breathe. I'd tried to keep her as comfortable as I could, but I just never knew how much pain she was in, or if she was even aware of herself or her surroundings at all. It may seem selfish or cold that I felt that way, but after watching her struggle for so long and feeling helpless to take her pain away, it was a relief to know that she wasn't suffering any longer.

Her funeral had been held the following Friday. There hadn't been a wake, or an overly long graveside service. A minister had said a prayer as my father and I stood solemnly aside. There hadn't been anyone else in attendance; the fact that my father had flown in at all was rather bewildering. I'd fully expected to be standing there alone, as I had been for the last few years. After I said my final goodbyes to her and laid a lone daffodil, her favorite flower, atop her casket, we watched them lower her gently into the ground and then walked away. I was numb inside, nothing more than a hollow shell of the person I'd once been as I shuffled across the neatly manicured grass at my father's side.

"Bells, honey," he'd paused me with a hand on my arm as I reached for my keys in my purse. "Now that you...that your mother..."

My lips pursed and my eyes narrowed as he stumbled over his words in discomfort.

"You want to know what I plan to do now that she's gone? Is that it?" He nodded and seemed to relax, somewhat. "Oh that's rich. Now you're worried about me? _Now_? After you left me here, a teenager, alone, barely capable of caring for myself much less my dying mother..."

"Isabella, it wasn't easy for me..."

"It wasn't easy for me either!" I screamed, hitting him in the arm with my purse. "You ran away. You moved on and lived your life just like everyone else did knowing I was stuck here all by my goddamn self. Did you ever once consider what any of this has done to me? What affect it's had on _my _life? I was a kid, Charlie. It should've been yousitting here day in and day out. At the very least, you should have been here _with me_, but instead you left me here to sacrifice my childhood, my hopes, my dreams, my future, while you went out in search of everything being here deprived me of."

"You're right," he sighed miserably, nodding his head as he looked at the ground. "I should have been here... but I wasn't strong enough to endure it the way you have, and I'm sorry for that. I've _been_ sorry for that, every single day since I left here."

My head bowed as I rubbed my temples. I'd just lost one parent, and fighting with the only one I had left held little interest for me. There was nothing to be gained by it. What was done was done, and there was no turning back to change it.

"I'm tired. I'm going home," I said as my hands dropped to my sides. The straps of my purse slid down my forearm and I just barely managed to grasp them before they slipped past my fingers. "You're more than welcome to the guest room, but I'm really... I just really want to be alone for a little while."

"I have a room booked at the Holiday Inn near the airport. My flight leaves first thing in the morning."

"I see." I cleared my throat and shook my head as I turned my gaze away from him. "In that case, I hope you have a safe flight. Thank you for coming. I know it must have been inconvenient for..."

"Isabella, I want you to come with me."

"What?" I balked, my gaze darting back to him.

"Sue and I talked after you called the other day, and we think it'd be best if you returned to Forks."

"With all due respect, I've managed quite well on my own thus far, all things considered."

"I'm not saying you haven't," he argued, holding his hands up. "But, Bella, there's nothing herefor you anymore."

"There isn't exactly much of anything _there_ for me either," I scoffed. He looked hurt, and quite possibly offended which almost led me to laugh incredulously, but by some miracle, I managed to keep it from bubbling out.

"I'm sorry. I'll think about it, okay?"

I shuffled my feet awkwardly. It had been so long since I'd last seen him, I wasn't sure what the acceptable departing etiquette for estranged fathers and daughters should be. Long ago, I would have hugged him without second thought, and it would have felt natural, but as I stepped into his open arms, it felt forced and uncomfortable, much like hugging a complete stranger would be.

"I'll call when I figure out what I'm going to do."

That night, as I wandered around my empty home, the thought of returning to Forks drifted in and out of my mind, as did the many forms of the age old question of 'what if?'

What if my life hadn't been turned upside down and inside out so long ago? What if it was possible to go back, start over, and somehow still find my way to where I should have been now, and who I should have become? What if what I'd thought would have brought me happiness back then, wouldn't have, and only by walking the path that I had would I have been given the opportunity to find what truly did? What if everything in life really does happen for a reason?

"What if I've just lost my goddamn mind..."

The answer was, I didn't know, and I never would if I didn't choose where the next chapter in my life would begin.

Sitting on the couch, staring at the empty hospital bed my mother had spent the majority of her final years in, the only thing I knew for certain was that it was time for the Phoenix chapter of my life to come to a close. Forks might not have felt like home any more than the small two bedroom bungalow here did in my mother's absence, but at least it was a place to start. A place where I could hopefully connect who I'd been with who I'd become in recent years.

"Forks it is, then."

And so it begins...


	2. Chapter 2

_Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight. We all know who does, and she's fab._

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><p>Forks... what exactly was there to say about the small town I'd been born and raised in? As I drove through the very center of it, pulling a small trailer behind my car with all of my worldly possessions, I could only think one thing:<p>

It never changed.

Five years had passed since I'd last seen the place, but so little had changed that it almost felt as though I hadn't been gone a day. Lumber trucks still rolled through the main intersection at regular intervals, the occasional one stopping in at the corner diner. The diner itself still boasted the same neon OPEN sign in the front window that occasionally read OP N because the E flickered on and off at will; it had done that for as long as I could remember. I would've thought they'd have fixed it by now, or perhaps even purchased a new one, but they hadn't. The side of the convenience store attached to the gas station was still littered with the same graffiti that had adorned it when I'd been in junior high; in big, bold, black letters with indecipherable designs surrounding it, it read '_Carl wuz here_'.

I'd often wondered just who "Carl" was every time I saw it as a young teen, and if he was still around to laugh at the fact that nobody had ever cared enough to paint over his signature.

As I made my way closer to my childhood home that feeling of nothing having changed remained. Teenagers were still using the parking lot of the old dollar movie theatre as the local hangout hot spot. The local Knights of Columbus hall welcoming sign was still advertising for Fish Fry Friday, Mr. Johnson's front yard still held the same ancient, beat up and rusted out pickup truck with the same FOR SALE sign in the front window, and Mrs. Evelyn Goodstead was still, apparently, an avid collector of all things garden gnome related; her yard was littered with them, always had been for as long as I could recall.

Upon walking through the door of my childhood home, however, that odd feeling of familiarity and the sense of security it provided me evaporated. I ambled awkwardly behind my father and Sue as they showed me around the place—as if I hadn't lived there my entire life before my mother had fallen ill—and next to nothing was as I'd remembered it.

Our old ugly, but comfortable, plaid living room furniture had been replaced with a sofa and love seat with an equally ugly floral pattern, and our scuffed up coffee table that had been used more as a foot prop than a place to sit our beverages had been replaced with some glass and teak wood ensemble, replete with a doily and a bowl of potpourri centered upon its top. The downstairs bathroom was no longer a light powder blue but some hideous shade of Pepto Bismol. Stepping into my old room was like a slap in the face. Everything of my own that had been left behind in our sudden uprooting to Phoenix was gone and replaced with decor and stray possessions that obviously—and I was just guessing here because of the sports themes running rampant in the room—belonged to a boy.

"Seth went a little overboard when we told him he could decorate his own room. He'd never had his own room before Leah went off to college."

It was my room, but it didn't matter. Out of all of the changes in entire house, only one room had really had any sort of affect on me—the kitchen. The table and chairs painted in mismatched colors had been tossed out, and the cheery yellow my mother had painted the room to make it feel like sunshine under the perpetual gray skies had been covered over with a pale sage color. I missed the way it had been before, and losing that feeling of her presence held within that room made me realize that I missed _her_. I missed my mom, horribly. Over the last few years, she'd been all I'd had in the way of companionship. It was impossible not to feel a gaping sense of loss in her absence.

I could feel tears rushing to brim in my eyes as my hand trailed over the smooth top of the new table, but I blinked them away quickly. Without looking up at them, I was able to keep my voice steady as I spoke.

"You both don't have to stay. I can get settled in just fine on my own."

"Are you sure, honey? We don't mind staying and helping."

My eyes shot up to Sue, and I found it hard to smother the anger that was building within me, but I tried to maintain as placid of an expression as possible.

"I'm sure."

I should have felt bad for the worried look she gave my father, but I didn't. She obviously thought my invitation for them to leave was because I didn't like her, and part of that assumption was true. I wasn't very fond of her, and it wasn't because she was simply the woman my father had chosen to move on with, or the fact that she'd erased any lingering trace of my mother's, or even my own, presence in my childhood home, either. My distaste for her began the day I was informed they were to be married in the following month.

What kind of woman marries a man that abandons his only child with his dying ex-wife at the age of seventeen? What kind of woman, who has children of her own roughly my age, doesn't take issue with the fact that the man she's dating never visits and rarely ever _calls_ his own daughter, yet wants this same man to be a part of her own children's lives? Didn't she fear he'd do the same to her, and subsequently them as well, at the first glimpse of rough times ahead? Or was she just as ruthlessly uncaring about the mental and emotional wellbeing of her son and daughter as my father was of my own?

I couldn't find it in myself to respect a woman that could find no wrong in what Charlie had done, how he'd conducted himself not only as an adult, but as a parent. I couldn't respect it, and I couldn't understand it, and because of that, I doubted I'd ever be able to accept her into any part of my life.

"Bella," Charlie sighed, stopping me from shutting the front door after them. "Sue's not trying to be your mother. She just wants to get to know you and be your friend if you'll let her."

I peeked over his shoulder to make sure his wife had traveled far enough down the walkway that she was out of hearing distance before I turned my gaze back to him. Judgmental I may very well be, but purposefully rude is something I'd rarely ever been.

"Do you remember how angry I was when you first told me we had to go to Phoenix? How I didn't want to go, and didn't care what was wrong with her because I couldn't forgive her for turning her back on us the way she did?"

"It's kind of hard to forget the fit you threw..."

"Yeah, well, keep in mind that what you did, how _you _left me, was worse. Months, Charlie. _Months_ would pass without a single call from you, and not once did you ever come down there to even check on us. Any person that's okay with that, isn't okay with me."

"Bells..."

"Don't _Bells_, me, Charlie," I snapped. "I'm not asking you to agree with my opinion, just accept it, because I'm entitled to it and there isn't a damn thing you can do to change it."

A moment of tense silence passed between us before a breath of defeat was expelled from his chest.

"I thought... I don't know, I guess I figured we'd moved a little further past this these last few months..."

"No offense, but calling me a handful of times after the funeral and letting me live here until I figure out my next move don't make up for your neglecting me when I needed you most."

I couldn't, for the life of me, understand him. Ever since he'd left Phoenix back in May he'd been trying to make amends, but he couldn't understand that the simple words of _I'm sorry_ did nothing to take away the hurt or anger I felt toward him. In the three months it had taken me to sell the house and tie up all the loose ends down in Phoenix, he'd called maybe half a dozen times—which was half a dozen more than he had in the six month period prior to my mother's passing. Of all the times I'd begged and pleaded for him to return in the years after he'd left us, he'd never given in. I couldn't understand how he expected me to just let go of my resentment and forgive his wrong doings as if they had been mere innocent mistakes.

It infuriated me. He'd destroyed every ounce of trust and faith I'd ever had in him, left me feeling as though he were the _last_ person on the face of the earth that I could depend on, yet, he kept pushing me to do just that; depend on him. It had started out with his request for me to return to Forks, where he and Sue would always be nearby if I needed them. From there, it moved on to his desire to buy me a newer, more reliable car—which I vehemently refused because my car ran just fine. It went even further after that with him and Sue offering to give me the old house, in its entirety—which I refused again and only agreed to a temporary compromise on the matter. I'd agreed to live in it under the stipulation that I'd take care of the utility bills and such on my own for the duration of time that I lived there. I didn't want their help after having been left to manage on my own for so long, and they couldn't seem to understand that I didn't need their assistance either.

With what I'd gotten out of the sale of the house in Phoenix, I would have been able to support myself until I figured out a long term plan. I would have been perfectly fine on my own. I didn't need them to buy me a car, or give me a house, or pay all of my utilities and living expenses. I wasn't rich, not anywhere even close to it, but I'd learned enough over the past few years of how to stretch my funds as far as they could go. After all of the lingering medical bills and other odds and ends had been taken care of, I'd been left with just a little over twenty grand; not enough to have kept ends meeting without a job bringing in more income, and certainly not enough to live a life of leisure, but it was enough that I would have been able to pull through. The fact that I'd been left with anything at all was a miracle in itself that I hadn't been expecting.

"I'll call if I need anything."

I wouldn't, and I think somewhere deep down, he knew it, too.

It didn't take long for me to get settled in; I didn't have much else besides clothes and a few baubles and knick knacks. That first night I found myself unable to sleep and wandering around the house. I'd never been able to rest easily in unfamiliar places, and with all the changes that had been made to the inside of the house, it was just that; unfamiliar. At some point during the night I found myself in my old bedroom, just staring out of the window that faced the house next door and the bedroom window that my best friend, once upon a time, had been the owner of.

In the days of my youth light had always shone through that window no matter the time of day. If it wasn't lit by Jacob's desk lamp beside it, or the glow of a computer screen, the light of his TV flickered against it. On late summer nights, such as the one I found myself unable to sleep through, Jake and I would hang outside our windows and do nothing but talk until one of us felt tired enough to sleep. We even had our own way of checking if the other was asleep by shining flashlight beams against each other's windows. Sitting there now, I kind of wished he still lived there and I could get his attention by flicking a flashlight on and off at the pane of glass that was pitch black beyond. It would've been nice to have someone to talk to, but he didn't live there, and neither did his family anymore. I wasn't sure who lived there now as I hadn't met them yet, but I was fairly certain they wouldn't take kindly to being woken in the middle of the night by the lunatic next door with the flashlight.

The first few days passed by slowly. Charlie didn't come by again, nor did Sue, but he did call once. The conversation was short, nothing more than to check in and see if I wanted him to swing by to mow the lawn. I didn't. I was more than capable of taking care of it on my own. In fact, it gave me something to do with myself. Of everything I'd thought I'd struggle with after my mother's passing, having too much time on my hands, and little to do with it, hadn't ever entered my mind. Since she'd gone, however, I'd found that it was what I struggled with the most.

When she'd been alive, every moment of my day had been dedicated to either her care, or keeping our home running smoothly. I didn't have free time to do with as I pleased, and after having lived that way for so long, I no longer even knew what I enjoyed anymore. I'd lost so much more than just my friends and the experiences I could have had in college with them. Somewhere along the line, I'd lost myself.

It had taken me twenty minutes to get the old rusty mower started, having forgotten its need to be primed first from my teenage years of having to mow the lawn as a form of punishment for disobedience. I'd nearly given in to knocking on a neighbor's door for help by the time I finally got it started. As I pushed it along, making obsessively straight lines across the yard, I thought about how sad it was that I'd sooner ask a stranger for help than my own father. The realization hadn't come as a surprise or a shock, just a depressing acknowledgement of the fact that I didn't have anyone in my life I trusted enough to rely upon. I didn't have anyone to rely upon, and I didn't have anyone to help me reconnect who I'd been with who I'd become and who I wanted to be in the future. The path to self-discovery was one I would have to face alone.

I hadn't a clue where to begin.

It was only barely after noon when I finished mowing the lawn and headed in for a quick shower to wash off the bits of shredded blades of grass that speckled every inch of me. Standing under the stream of water, I decided I needed to start getting out of the house. The loneliness and silence of living alone was slowly driving me toward cabin fever induced insanity. My mother hadn't been much in the way of company to interact with towards the end, but tending to her care had provided me with a buffer against the loneliness that would sometimes creep upon me during the long hours of night; the few she'd manage to sleep through peacefully, anyhow. There was nothing holding that feeling at bay any longer. I'd felt it every moment of every day since she'd gone, and as the days and weeks passed, it steadily grew within me.

I felt like there was nothing left inside of me but a vacuous void that was slowly sucking the life out of me—what little life I had left, anyway. I didn't have any friends or acquaintances, and for all intents and purposes, I didn't feel as though I had any family either. In our years apart, Charlie had faded in my mind and heart from being "Dad" to just... well, just _being_. He didn't really feel like anything to me anymore. I didn't know if that could be fixed, and moreover, I wasn't sure I even _wanted_ to try to fix it. What was the point in putting forth the effort to fix something I might never be able to trust in again anyhow? I couldn't say that I wouldn't spend the rest of my life wondering what next hardship would have him hightailing it away from me and leaving me to handle the situation on my own again. Part of me wondered if it'd be easier, safer, to just let go and start completely anew. Meet new people, form new friendships, and fill the void within me with people I could consider as my family. It was definitely a thought worth looking deeper into.

That night I made myself a cup of chamomile tea and wrapped myself in a light cardigan before stepping out onto the front porch. I'd dreamt many a summer night in Arizona of being back in Forks—of being back home. There was just something about the peacefulness of the neighborhood, the sounds of crickets chirping, and the crisp, cool breezes that Phoenix nights couldn't hold a candle to. As I gently rocked myself in the rickety old porch swing, I closed my eyes and allowed the serenity surrounding me to seep in and soothe my chaotic mind. I needed to figure out what to do with my life, and soon, because I would be crazy before long if I continued on the path I was on.

"I need a job..."

"The Thriftway..." An unfamiliar masculine voice spoke, startling the ever living hell out of me. Hot tea splashed against the skin of my hands and wrists and I cried out as I jumped up and dropped the mug to the porch floor.

"Are you alright? I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," he spoke rapidly, leaping up the few steps onto the porch.

"Who are you?" I croaked, tears brimming in my eyes against the searing pain as I backed away from him. My lower back bumped into the corner of the porch railing and my eyes darted around nervously. "Why are you here?"

"I'm sorry, really," he apologized again, holding his hands up as he halted his progression toward me and stood just feet away. "I didn't realize you hadn't heard me walk up. I'm your neighbor, Edward. Edward Masen."

"It's late. You shouldn't sneak up on people in the dark like that."

"Sorry, again. I was just taking the trash out and saw you on the porch so I thought I'd introduce myself since I haven't... had the chance to..." he trailed off to a whisper, his gaze falling down to the spilled tea still steaming on porch floor and back up to where I was coddling my right wrist and hand to my stomach. "You burned yourself, didn't you? Is it bad?"

A tear slipped out of my eye as I shook my head at him. "I'll be fine."

"Can I see it?" He took a step toward me.

"I'm fine, really."

"Humor me, please?" he asked, taking another step and holding out his hand. "I feel horrible. I just want to make sure you're really not hurt badly."

For a brief moment I contemplated hopping over the railing and running away, not knowing who he was or where he even came from, but he didn't seem threatening in any way. He seemed... I don't know, nice? Caring maybe? It might have been a huge mistake, and I might have cursed myself later on for being so stupid, but after moments of him patiently waiting for me to extend my hand toward his awaiting one, I found myself giving in to his request.

His breath hissed through his teeth as he stepped to the side, my lower arm cradled gently in his hands, to better see the damage in the soft glow of the porch light. I looked down, my gaze falling upon the vivid red splotches of burnt flesh and immediately tried retracting myself from his delicate grasp.

"It's fine, really. I've had worse before."

"Will you at least let me get you bandaged up? It's the least I can do after sneaking up on you."

My eyes darted around, taking in the darkened windows of the other houses on the street. If he tried something and I screamed, I doubted anyone would hear me, but there was something in the tone of his voice as he said 'please' again that brought my gaze back to him and had me nodding my consent. He bent down to retrieve the mug and broken handle as I made a beeline for the kitchen, wanting nothing more than to run cool water over my burns. He followed just a step behind. As he came to stand beside me at the sink, I stepped awkwardly to the side, uncomfortable with his close proximity. He just quirked a small smile and reached out to tug the sleeves of my sweater up so they wouldn't get wet.

"Where do you keep your first aid kit?"

"Um... I think there's one under the bathroom sink down the hall."

I stood there silently as he tended to my injuries, watching as he dried my wrists and hands carefully and spread goop over the reddened marks.

I was socially inept. I'd decided this as he spun the roll of gauze over the burns with practiced ease, undoubtedly just as uncomfortable as I was in our awkward silence. If there was ever a strange first encounter to be had, this one was it. It was at that thought that I realized I hadn't ever given him my name in return, not that I'd really had a chance to with burning myself and all.

"I'm Bella, by the way."

"It's nice to meet you, Bella," he replied, smiling easily. He was taking this whole thing in stride much better than I was. He seemed calm whereas I felt like I was ready to burst out of my skin with anxious energy. "There... that ought'a do it."

"Thank you."

"Not a problem. Like I said, it was the least I could do."

Another awkward silence descended upon us in which I had no idea what to say. It didn't appear as though he did either with the way he shuffled in place, looking around as though something would jump out at him and save us both.

"Pardon me for asking, but, are you renting this house from the Swans?" he asked, looking perplexed. "It's just... I never saw a for sale sign out front and everything's almost exactly the same as the last time I was in here."

"Uh... no, not really anyway," I answered, my nose scrunching up a bit as I tried to think of a way to explain it that wasn't confusing or bordering on too much information. I highly doubted he'd be interested in hearing my life story and how it led me to where I was currently standing before him.

"It's my father's house. I'm just living here for a while until I can get back on my feet."

"Your father? Charlie's your dad?" He looked even more perplexed as I nodded, fighting back a grimace at his usage of the term "dad".

"Huh... I never knew he had another daughter." My lips pursed as I looked away.

"I'm not really surprised by that," I muttered, turning away from him. Realizing I was being rude, I offered him an apologetic smile as I went about filling the kettle for a fresh cup of tea. "Would you like some tea? Coffee? Anything?"

"No, I'm good, but thank you."

We fell into somewhat easier conversation after that. He asked me if I'd grown up in Forks, and I'd told him that I had and that I'd lived here until I was seventeen. That, of course, led him to asking where I'd moved to and why. The where was easy to answer, but the why was anything but. In the end, to avoid giving him more information than he would probably be comfortable hearing, I simply told him I'd gone to live with my mother and left it at that. He didn't pry any further on that subject, either content with the answer or intuitively aware that it was a sensitive subject and not wanting to push it. I couldn't tell, but it didn't matter. The subject was dropped and I was more than content with that.

Eventually we made our way back out onto the porch, me with a second fresh cup of tea and him with a glass of lemonade. I sat on the swing again while he leaned against the rail of the porch across from me.

"When I walked up you'd said something about needing a job. The Thriftway always seems to be hiring. I'm not sure if that's the kind of thing you're looking for, but..."

"Yeah, I thought about that," I nodded. "I'll probably put in an application sometime this week. It's about as good as anything else around here considering I have no work history or specialized skills in anything."

"Do you have a college degree?"

"No... I never went to college. I've got nothing." I could see the question in his eyes. How does someone get to be a full-grown adult and have absolutely no work history or college experience? The answer was easy enough to come up with, but I wasn't comfortable sharing it, and I think he gathered as much.

"So, Edward. What is it that you do?" I asked, wanting to steer the conversation away from me for a bit.

"I'm a mason."

"Yeah, I got that." My brow furrowed as I chuckled lightly. "Your last name is Masen."

"No, no," he laughed, nearly choking on a sip of lemonade. "I work in masonry... brick laying, concrete pouring and such."

"Oh..." I felt stupid and could do nothing but laugh at myself for it. "Sorry."

"Nothing to apologize for. It's ironic, I know, but it's the family business. We dabble in carpentry from time to time as well. Whatever keeps the money flowing in during the slow times of the year."

"Family business... so what, like you, your father and brothers or something?"

"Ah, no," he chuckled, lifting himself up to sit on the rail. I worried for a moment it would give way or he'd fall off of it, but it seemed sturdy enough as he continued talking. "I don't have any brothers, just a sister. I have a couple aunts, uncles, and a handful of cousins, too, but only a couple of them work for the company."

"Sounds like you have a big family."

"Not _that_ big. There's only..." he trailed off, one of his eyes squinting shut in an adorable way as he counted in his head. "Fifteen of us? Give or take, not including kids."

"Holy! That's one crowded holiday dinner table," I laughed, trying to picture it. I couldn't. The biggest family gathering I'd ever been a guest at had been eight, and it wasn't even my own family. It was Angela Weber's.

"It is," he sniggered. "That's if you can even find a seat at it. It's not uncommon for a couple of us to eat while standing or join the kids at their table."

It sounded as though his family was tightly knit, that they weren't just cousins or such, but friends as well. I wished I knew what that felt like, but I didn't. Even before moving to Phoenix, I'd never known what being a part of a family like that was like. It had always just been me and my dad, but then even that bond crumbled.

He looked down at his watch and sighed, the sound bringing my gaze back to him.

"It's late. I should probably head home and let you get some sleep."

"'Kay," I nodded, part of me wishing I had the guts to ask him to stay for a little while longer. It'd been forever since I'd had someone to just talk to without it having something to do with my mother's care, or with someone I'd rather not have to speak to because of our history. It was refreshing talking with Edward, if for no other reason than talking with him made me feel as though someone was actually seeing me as a person and not just as someone's caregiver for the first time in as long as I could remember.

"It was nice chatting with you."

He smiled as he stood from the railing.

"I just live next door. I'm sure we'll see plenty of each other around, and I promise not to sneak up on you in the dark next time. I'm sorry, again, for that."

"It's fine. It doesn't even hurt anymore," I snickered, shaking my head as he guided me toward the front door. I turned toward him, one hand still on the knob, and couldn't help but smile genuinely.

"I really was nice meeting you. Goodnight, Edward."

"Likewise. Have a good night, Bella."

Closing the door between us that night, I felt happy for once at the possibility of having made a friend. Little did I know when I climbed into bed just how good of a friend he'd become to me in a short period of time.


	3. Chapter 3

_Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight. We all know who does, and she's fab._

* * *

><p>I'd never noticed it as a kid, but time seemed to move at a snail's pace in Forks. It was as if there was some magnetic pull in the Pacific Northwest that slowed every clock within a fifty mile radius of me. I'd made a conscious effort to get out and about in the days that had passed, venturing out into the town and even heading out to Port Angeles once just for something to do. In my travels I'd put in at least a dozen applications at places ranging from the local grocery store, to the diner, a bookstore, and even the movie theatre in Port. Two and a half weeks had passed since then, and I hadn't yet heard back from any of them.<p>

Thankfully, during those two and a half weeks Charlie hadn't added any fuel to the fires of frustration with any sudden visits. He'd called once, though, to ask me what I wanted for my birthday. I didn't want anything. I think he thought I was trying to be difficult, but I really wasn't. I just didn't want anything; not from him, and not from anyone else either. I didn't even want to acknowledge that I was turning another year older, and I'd still done basically nothing with my life. I just wanted to ignore it altogether.

About the only enjoyable moments in my days since I'd returned to Forks came from Edward's visits. He'd wander over any time he saw me outside, and once or twice he knocked on my door when I wasn't. I hadn't yet knocked on his, even on evenings or days when he was home and I was lonely and wishing for conversation to distract me from my growing worries of unemployment and stagnancy in life. I don't know why, but it just felt strange walking over there knowing the family I'd spent half of my childhood with no longer lived there. I was afraid to see how much the inside of the home had changed, how little of it resembled my memories of what it had been like when the only boy I'd ever loved lived in it. I was afraid of seeing another part of my previous life vanish, much like how it did when I entered my own childhood home and saw that none of it had remained the same.

As I stood in the shower, I thought about the conversations Edward and I had had over the last few weeks. Most of them contained little of anything significant, but through them I'd learned much about him. He hated peas and spinach, but loved beets and cauliflower. He detested country music, but made an exception for Rascal Flatts. I just laughed and nodded along when he'd mentioned them, even though I hadn't a clue who they were. Chances were I'd heard their songs on the radio at some point, but I had just never paid enough attention to be able to identify them by name. I gathered from the conversation that they were country, or at least country-esque. Almost everything he ever said always came as a surprise to me because it was never anything I would have expected him to say. Like when he said his favorite sport was golf, or when he said he'd been picked on as a kid because he'd been chubby, wore glasses, had braces, and had been part of the math club. He even admitted to being heavily into Dungeons & Dragons in high school, to which I reluctantly admitted I had no idea what it was.

Almost everything he came up with in conversation caught me off guard, but nothing came close to finding out his age. I couldn't wrap my head around the fact that he was thirty. It wasn't that he was immature or anything; he really wasn't. It was just that he didn't _look _thirty, not anywhere close to it. I wouldn't have put him a day over mid-twenties at best. I, on the other hand, could have passed for his age and then some. One of my mother's home hospice nurses had once told me I had the eyes of an old soul. I think that was her way of gently telling me that it wasn't my eyes, it was just me. I looked _old_, and tired; perpetually tired. Seeing his shock at me voicing my twenty-one years of age was just depressing.

I swiped my hand across the mirror to wipe away the fog and just stood there, staring at my face until it was nothing but abstract shapes. I didn't look anything like I had when I was a teenager anymore. I pressed my fingers against the skin of my face, pulling it taut here, lifting it there, just trying to find some resemblance to the reflection I was once familiar with, but I couldn't find it. It was safe to say stress had been very unkind to me over the years I'd spent in Phoenix.

"Eyes of an old soul, my ass. I look a step away from the Crypt Keeper."

By the time I'd gotten dressed, started a load of laundry while the coffee I'd set to brew percolated, and chugged down cup of said coffee, it was almost ten in the morning. Since I hadn't heard back from any of the places I'd applied to for employment my mission for the day was to search out a few new places. I'd figured, if nothing else, getting back out there and actively trying to find a job would at least have made me feel somewhat productive. It was a hell of a lot better than sitting around the house just waiting for my life to turn in some direction, any direction at all. There weren't many places I could think of off the top of my head as I got into my car and pulled away from the house. There was the coffee shop, a little convenience store, a few fast food restaurants I had no desire to work at, and... Newton's Sporting Goods.

How sad was it that at almost twenty-two I was finding myself walking into a sporting goods store where I'd been hired as a teenager, but had never gotten to officially start working at, looking for employment? It was a blatant show of how the twists and turns in my life had led me absolutely nowhere. The only difference between walking into the store as a teen and walking into it now was back then I hadn't exactly wanted the job, or any job for that matter. The only reason I'd even applied there in high school was because I had wanted a car, and the only way I was going to get it was if I paid for half of it. It was one of the last parental actions I could remember my father taking before dragging me down to Phoenix and leaving me there. It helped that Mike had assured me his parents would hire me, and that the job was a piece of cake. He would've known. He'd worked there every summer through high school and half the time he did nothing but hang out with all of us behind the building.

"Oh my... it couldn't be," Mrs. Newton gasped as the bell above the door announced my entrance. "Isabella Swan, is that really you?"

"None other." I forced a smile, feeling inexplicably nervous as she came around the counter.

"Oh," she cooed, wrapping her arms around me. I stiffened in her embrace, caught off guard by the affectionate gesture, and tried to soften my unnatural smile as she pulled back and held me at arm's length. "My lord, look at how you've grown."

Was that a polite way of saying I looked like hell? I couldn't tell.

"You've always been such a beautiful young woman. Oh, I'm so happy to see you," she gushed, wrapping me in another embrace. Okay, so maybe I didn't look half as bad as I thought... or maybe so much time had passed that her memory of me wasn't quite as sharp.

"How long are you in town for? I'm sure Michael would love a chance to catch up with you."

"Um... I'm not really sure. For a while at least," I answered, following her back toward the register counter.

"I'm sorry you made the trip out here today for nothing. He won't be back until sometime the middle of next week," she said with a kind smile. "Would you like to leave your number so he can call you when he gets back?"

"Actually... I didn't come here to see Mike, Mrs. Newton," I stammered slightly. "I was wondering if you had any current positions open that I could apply for."

"Oh..." she trailed off as her brow furrowed. "Aw, sweetie, I wish we did, but business has been slow lately. We can't really afford to hire more help right now."

"It's okay. I understand." I hoped my smile was convincing. "Well, will you tell Mike I said hello? I'm sure I'll see him around at some point."

"I promise I will," she said cheerily, reaching across to place her hand over mine atop the counter. She gave it a light pat and shake. "Gosh, it was so good to see you back up here. Don't be a stranger while you're in town, okay?"

I promised her I wouldn't be, though I wasn't sure I'd return any time soon, and then made my way back out to my car. The convenience store was much the same, nothing available, as was the movie rental store I passed on my way to the coffee shop. By the time I made it to the coffee shop I felt defeated. Part of me wished I'd just stayed in Phoenix where jobs with little to no qualification requirements were in abundance. My mood was sour, but I tried not to let it show as I walked into the shop and headed straight for the service counter.

"Can I help you?" a girl of no older than eighteen asked with an overly friendly demeanor.

"Hopefully. Would you happen to know if any positions here are open for hire?"

"We might," she smiled with a nod as she reached under the counter and withdrew an application. "It never hurts to put one in, right? If there's anything open or comes available, you'll hear back from Cindy, the manager. Just fill it out and bring it back up here when you're finished. I'll make sure it's on her desk so she sees it first thing tomorrow morning when she opens."

"Thank you so much," I sighed in relief.

"Can I get you anything else?"

"Sure, I'll take a..."

"No freaking way! Bella?" a _very _familiar voice erupted. My eyes closed momentarily before I turned, my heart dropping into my stomach.

"Jess... hi." Her squeal hurt my ears as she literally jumped at me.

"Oh my god! I haven't seen you in _ages_! When did you come back? How long have you been here?" Out of nowhere she slapped my arm and scowled at me. "Why haven't you called me in forever?"

Ironic, I could've asked her the same question a hundred times over the last few years. If memory served, the last time we'd spoken she'd been busy and said she'd call me back. She never did.

"I was a little, you know, preoccupied," I replied, scratching my temple. She'd known where I was, and why. What did it matter when I'd come back when she'd known all along where I was and how to get a hold of me?

"That's _right_. Your mom," she said, as if it had just dawned on her. Maybe it had. "How is she anyway?"

"Um... she passed away in May." Dear lord, this wasn't a conversation I felt up to having at that moment.

"Oh, I'm so sorry. I wish you would've called. I would've flown in or something to be there for you."

"It's alright, really."

_The fact that you couldn't give me the time of day when I really needed you pretty much negates that sentiment entirely_, I'd thought. Part of me wished I'd had the brass balls to say it aloud, but I didn't, so instead, I just smiled faintly.

"Holy shit, I still can't believe you're _here_. In _Forks_," she squealed again, apparently unaffected by the news of my mother's death. Unsurprising. I'd seen as much coming. "We _have_ to catch up. So much has happened since I last talked to you, and I can't wait to tell you all about it."

"Jess, maybe another ti..."

"Psh, do you have anywhere to be right now? I don't, at least for a few hours," she cut me off, pushing me back toward the register. "What do you want to drink? My treat."

I looked back at the girl behind the register and sighed. I'd forgotten how pushy Jessica could be, and I tried to recall if it had ever bothered me as much when we were younger as it did right then.

"Sorry," I apologized for no real reason. "I'll have a medium coffee, light with cream and two sugars, please."

Jessica ordered herself some iced caramel concoction and then promptly dragged me over to a table once our drinks were in hand. I listened as she rambled on about what college was like in California, how awesome the beaches were, and how hot the guys were, for what felt like an eternity. Very seldom would she pause in search of a response from me, and the few times she had, I really had nothing to offer. I didn't know anything about what college life was like, couldn't empathize on having to share a dorm room with people I couldn't stand, or having to run across campus to make it to class on time because I'd overslept after partying all night at a frat house. She'd seemed annoyed when she'd had to explain skim-boarding to me because I'd never even heard of it. Surfing, wakeboarding, boogeyboarding, yes. _Skim-boarding_? Nope. Didn't have a clue.

"Damn, girl! What have you been living under a rock or something?" she balked, right after I admitted I had no idea what clothing designer she'd been jabbering on about for the last fifteen minutes straight.

"Pretty much, Jess," I shrugged, my gaze flitting across the parking lot through the window beside us. "Ask me about feeding tubes, catheters, pain and nausea medications, chemo side effects, or the decor of Western Regional Medical Center and I'm an encyclopedia of knowledge. Anything outside of that, I'm pretty clueless."

"Whatever," she scoffed, kicking me lightly under the table. I looked back at her and she smiled. "We'll just have to get you up to speed with the rest of the world."

A dry, nearly silent chuckle escaped me as I shook my head. My eyes were trained on my fingers destroying the plastic lid of my empty coffee cup when she spoke again. All I wanted to do was go home.

"Did you hear that Jake's getting married next month?" My eyes darted up to hers, the shreds of thin plastic falling from between my fingers onto the table.

"No... I didn't," I breathed. "I haven't spoken to him in... two years? It might be more, I can't remember."

"That's around the time he started dating Vanessa. They've been together for two and half years now I think. Crazy right?"

"Yeah... crazy." Well at least that explained why he'd stopped calling.

"Did he send you an invitation? I'm sure he'd send you one. Hell, I hadn't talked to him in over a year, but I got one back in June."

"No, I didn't get one." Because he didn't send one.

"Oh."

"I, um... I should probably get going," I said, looking down at my watch. I had nowhere of importance to be, but the silence that was growing more suffocating by the minute was getting to be too much to bear.

"Oh my god! Me too!" She jumped up from the table like something bit her in the ass. "I'm in town for another two weeks. We should get together, grab some dinner or catch a movie or something. I'll call you."

"Sounds good," I played along as she hugged me goodbye, both of us knowing she hadn't asked for a new number, nor had she even asked where I was living.

As I watched her walk away, get in her car, and pull away from the shop, it began to sink in that I'd felt no connection whatsoever to someone I'd once regarded as a sister; someone I'd, at one time, been entirely incapable of even beginning to fathom growing apart from one day, and yet, we'd done just that. We'd grown apart. So far, in fact, that I couldn't find a single thing we had in common anymore. Somewhere, deep down, I realized I'd held out hope that if I ever did manage to run into my old friends that our bonds would still exist. They didn't. Not for me, obviously not for her... and not for Jacob, either. The friendships might still remain to some degree between the others, but I'd been cut loose from the binding threads that held us all together during my years of isolation. Isolation I hadn't chosen for myself.

The application still sat upon the table in front of me, the words blurring as tears built in my eyes. Tears of anger, sadness, loneliness, hopelessness... I didn't know. I hated this. I hated what my life had become, where I was, how I'd gotten there, knowing where I could've been instead... I hated all of it.

"_Fuck_."

The application crumpled in my fist as I stood from the table, the sound of the chair scraping across the floor jarring to the few customers in the shop. I didn't care. I didn't care about anything. On my way out, I tossed the application into the trash and left without looking back. I was done.

With everything.


	4. Chapter 4

_Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight. We all know who does, and she's fab._

* * *

><p>Question of the year: How long can a temper tantrum last?<p>

Answer: For a child, anywhere from a few seconds to a few hours. For me?

Three _days_.

I left Forks, Washington on a Thursday afternoon with nothing but my purse and my car. I didn't return home for clothes, or food, or any kind of bare essentials. I didn't return home to knock on Edward's door, the one friend I had in the world, to say goodbye either. I just left, and if anyone noticed, not a blip on the radar was to be made of it. No missing persons reports, or frantic calls from a worried parent to my cell phone. Nothing. For three days I slept in motels by night, and just drove by day with no direction or intention of stopping.

On the third day, somewhere in the middle of nowhere, Utah, I got a flat tire.

As I sat in the dark of my old bedroom, on a bed that wasn't the one I'd had when it had been mine, flicking a flashlight on and off absentmindedly, I wondered how far I would've gotten if it hadn't been for that flat tire. I wondered if I would've ever stopped or turned back around. Hell, I wondered why I _did_ turn back around. I clicked the flashlight off one last time and sighed to myself.

I could've kept going. I could've just kept bouncing from town to town, state to state, until I found someplace I felt a desire to settle down in. Once there, I could've reinvented myself, became anyone I wanted to be, and made new friends that didn't have to know about where I came from or what remained in my past because it would forever remain there; in the past.

"Idiot," I muttered to myself, flopping back on the bed. "You should've kept going."

A beam of white light illuminated the room for a moment, and then cut off. For a moment, I thought it might have been a car turning around or something, but then it flicked on and off again, coming through the window and dancing for a second across the far wall. Memories of Jake and I years before doing the same thing to get the other's attention flitted across my mind, and my heart began to race as I pushed myself up and off the bed. The light flicked on once again and caught me right in the eyes as I reached the window, and I had to blindly feel for the lip to pull it up as the light cut off and colorful orbs danced in my vision.

"Lucy, you got some 'splainin' to do."

I don't think I've ever been so glad to hear one person's voice before as I was in that moment to hear Edward's. His accent was horrible and nothing like Ricky Ricardo, but it made me laugh.

"Porch?"

"Meet ya down there."

I was sitting on the second step of the porch when he strolled over, dressed in jeans and a long sleeved t-shirt pushed up to his elbows. I tucked a lock of hair behind my ear as he casually lowered himself down to the step beside me, wishing I'd thought to change out of my cruddy old plaid pajama pants. His shoulder bumping into me broke me out of my self consciousness, and I looked over at him.

"I was worried about you, ya know. Where'd you run off to?"

"Utah," I chuckled dryly, shaking my head.

"Spur of the moment vacation, or... ?"

"Something like that. I just... needed to get away."

My eyes roamed the dark yard and street. I could feel his gaze on the side of my face, but while it was slightly unnerving, it didn't exactly make me uncomfortable; just hyperaware of his proximity.

"Tell me something about you. Something real." I laughed and he knocked his thigh into mine. "I'm serious. We've been talking for weeks now and I feel like you know almost everything there is to know about me, but I've barely heard a thing about you."

"Something real, huh?"

"Yeah, and no BS like you don't like tofu or something."

I thought for a minute about what to say, but the only thing I really felt the urge to say, was what I was feeling at that moment. So I did.

"I'm tired. Not like physically tired... well I _am_ physically tired, but that's not what I'm talking about. Hell I don't even know what I'm talking about. I'm just... I don't know any other way to describe it. I feel drained; physically, emotionally, mentally. God, some days I feel like I'm ninety years old and trapped in a twenty-one year old body."

"Is that what sent you to Utah?" he asked, resting his elbows on the step behind us and leaning back.

I nodded, looking at a tree swing across the street. "Pretty much. One crap day preceded by five crap years just proved to be more than I could handle."

"What happened the day you left? The night before you said you were going to put out a few more applications, and then you disappeared."

"I got turned down at three places because they didn't have anything open right now. Then, I ran into an old friend at the fourth place, listened to how great her life was, how much fun she'd had at college, and everything wonderful that was going on in the lives of everyone I used to be friends with..."

"And your life isn't great, or hasn't been? Is that it?" he supplied when I trailed off. I tilted my head to look at him.

"It's part of it, but not all of it." I looked away from him again and gazed off into the distance, my thoughts racing.

Was it even really part of it? I wasn't sure. I knew for a long time it had been the bulk of my issues or whatever, but I wasn't so sure that whether my life had been good or bad over the last few years really had much at all to do with what I was feeling anymore. Being able to sit there and say that, yeah, the last few years of my life had been kind of shitty, but there were plenty of people in the world whose lives were much worse than my own really made me think it was least part of my problems. It wasn't about comparing my own life to the lives of people around me anymore. No matter where I was, what I did, or what quality of life I had, there would always be someone either better or worse off than me. I could understand that, rationalize it, and accept it for what it was.

So if that wasn't the issue, what was?

"I just feel... _lost_." My gaze continued to flit across the night landscape. "It didn't bother me to hear that she was happy or enjoying life or whatever. What got under my skin was listening to all the plans she and the others have for their lives. I've got no plans... no direction, or ambition, or goals... no dreams. I've got nothing, and it sucks."

"Come on, you've gotta have _some_ kind of dreams or goals for yourself."

I looked at him and smiled sadly. "I don't. I haven't since..." I looked away, shaking my head.

"Since...?" I looked down at my feet as he urged me to continue, but I just couldn't; or maybe _wouldn't. _

"It doesn't matter. I just haven't for a really long time."

He grunted, and I watched him rub his hand back and forth over his mouth for a moment out of the corner of my eye. He seemed annoyed, or perhaps agitated. I couldn't really tell but he was definitely displeased either with my general apathy, or my unwillingness to share the truth of my life between when I'd moved away from Forks and when I'd returned. The topic had come up a time or two since the first night we'd met and talked, and every time it did I'd dodged it with as much tact as I could muster.

It was odd, really. For as many times as I'd wished to have someone to talk to while I was living in the middle of the situation, now that it was over and I had someone sitting next to me who would undoubtedly lend me that friendly ear I'd always longed for, talking about it was the absolute _last _thing I wanted to do. It wasn't something I wanted to share, and it wasn't something I wanted to be defined by any longer, especially not by him.

I wished I knew what he was thinking as his head turned away from me, his fingers either tugging at his bottom lip, tapping his chin, or rubbing over his mouth, but I didn't have a clue. I wished I knew what made him laugh to himself with such little humor and shake his head. I wished I knew what made him curse under his breath and clear his throat while sliding himself a foot or two away from me on the step. When his gaze turned to me, a saddened expression on his face as he nodded, I stopped wishing to know, and wished instead that I knew how to make that expression go away.

"Okay, Bella... okay. I give. Just because we're neighbors doesn't mean we have to be friends."

"But we are friends, at least I consider you a friend. Well, my only friend, really," I responded, confused. He laughed, again without humor, as he shook his head and looked away.

"I highly doubt _that_..."

"It's true," I cut him off, making his gaze dart in my direction, his mouth hung slightly open with unsaid words on the tip of his tongue. I nodded as I continued, the truth undoubtedly clearly visible in the sadness that always seemed to linger in my eyes.

"I had friends a long time ago, before I moved away from here, but since then... you're the first person who's ever talked to me for _me_."

"I don't understand..." He looked confused, truly baffled by my words. "Surely you made new friends in Phoenix, right? And what happened to your friends from here? Didn't you say you met up with one the other day?"

He'd never understand; he _couldn't _ever understand if I kept holding the last few years of my life in tight lipped secrecy. A war waged on in my mind, torn between not wanting to be defined by my past and needing someone to just know _me_. All of me. I needed someone to understand why I didn't have any friends, why my father and I had become so estranged, and why I couldn't answer the simple question of 'What do you want to do with your life'. I sighed to myself as I realized this because as much as I didn't _want_ to talk about it, I _had_ to talk about it.

"I never made new friends, and the friendships I had here faded over time," I finally answered. His only outward response was a deepening of the furrow in his brow. I began to fidget nervously—something I was prone to do while talking about things that made me uncomfortable. I picked at the lint on my pajama pants, traced my fingertips over the lines of the plaid pattern, and all the while kept my eyes from meeting with his again as I spoke.

"Remember when I said I moved down there to live with my mother?" He hummed his assent and waited for me to continue. "It wasn't really to live with her; it was to take care of her. She was... she had... she..."

I stumbled over my words as tears that I thought had long since dried out over losing her brimmed in my eyes. It was just a fact of life, and one that I'd lived with knowing would come sooner rather than later for well over a year straight. It hadn't been difficult for me to relay the news to Jessica, so why was it all of a sudden such an emotional struggle for me to be able to say the same words to him?

He scooted closer. I didn't see it because my eyes had been closed, but I felt the movement on the wooden step beneath me, and I felt his hand come to rest over mine, halting the nervous movements of my fingers. He brought his other hand to my back and began rubbing slow, soothing circles.

"She was sick?" he asked as I swiped away the tears before they had a chance to fall. I nodded and swallowed down the sob that was building in me.

"She had cancer."

"Had as in she's in remission, or...?" I shook my head, my lips pressed together and turned down.

"She passed away a few months ago. At the beginning of May."

"I'm sorry to hear that." His tone was kind; sympathetic and saddened. I shrugged and nodded. What more could I do? It made me sad to think about it, but it was what it was; there was no changing it. "That had to be hard on you. You were what? Sixteen, seventeen when you moved there? I can see how living with something like that at home would make it hard to make new friends."

"It was," I nodded again. "I couldn't relate to anyone in school. I didn't even really try, either, though. When I was at school, I was always worried about my mom at home, and when I was at home, I was too busy taking care of her to worry about going out and having fun with people... not that I was ever invited to."

"Did your friends from up here ever visit you, or you them? You must have had some way to escape it all from time to time, didn't you?"

"No... like I said, those friendships faded. We kept in contact for a while, but then they were just always too busy to call or talk when I called. Senior year was crazy for everyone. They had SAT tests to study for, college applications to fill out, prom and other festivities to plan for and attend..." I trailed off, remembering how left out of everything I'd felt back then, but snapped myself out of it quickly. "Pretty much everything I _wasn't_ busy doing."

"So everyone just bailed on you?" he asked, his tone incredulous as though the idea of it personally offended him somehow. "That's fucked."

I laughed. He shrugged, appearing unapologetic despite his following words.

"Sorry, but it is."

We spoke for a while longer; long enough into the night, in fact, that we'd both nearly begun falling asleep where we sat. Edward was a curious person by nature, that much I'd known already from the handfuls of conversations we'd had over the course of a few weeks, and that curiosity brought forth a plethora of questions. Some I answered—like why I hadn't at least tried to take some classes in community college, and why I'd never held a job during all those years. Others I didn't—like why my father didn't just move her back up here when she got ill, and, after finding out he'd initially gone down to Phoenix with me, why he left us behind and returned to Forks.

It was obvious that Edward was curious about why Charlie was such a sore subject for me. I could see it in his eyes, the lingering questions that begged for answers in the face of such an anomalous father-daughter relationship. I'd seen the same questions in his eyes the night we'd met when he'd commented that he hadn't known Charlie had _another_ daughter and the news hadn't surprised me in the least. It pissed me off something fierce that he was parading around as a proud parent of kids that weren't even his while neglecting me, his own flesh and blood, but surprise me the news had not.

My continued hesitance to talk about anything relating to my father seemed to be enough for him to understand that the topic of Charlie was off limits, and he quickly left it alone. It wasn't that I didn't have an answer to give him. After dwelling over those very same questions for years, I just didn't like, or wish to share, the conclusion I'd come to:

He just didn't care enough to, not about her _or _me.

I'd once truly believed that he'd left because it hurt him too much to see her so ill, but if that had been true, he wouldn't have gone on with his life as though neither of us existed at all. It wouldn't have been months on end between calls to check in with us, and he would've been there when I needed help, or when I graduated, or when she'd been in the ICU any of the handful of times she'd been. If he'd cared, he would've been there for me, and for her, during the last few weeks she'd been alive. But he hadn't been, and it was because he just didn't care enough to be bothered with such a strenuous situation. Only after it had ended did he show his face and put on the front of a caring and concerned parent. It was bullshit, and I hated him for it.

Edward steered the conversation away from the parental front by returning to my Utah debacle, wanting to understand what it really was that made me run. He was patient as I tried to put into words the thoughts that had plagued me from the moment the possibility of my mother's passing had gone from possible in the long run, to inevitable in the short term. It was humiliating and disheartening trying to explain how there were times when I felt I knew no more about myself, about who I was or what I enjoyed, than I knew about any random stranger passing me by on the street.

I didn't expect him to understand any of it, but he seemed to—at least a little bit. He'd admitted to having had his own self-identity crisis in his early twenties, though it had been much less severe than what I was in the midst of. He might have been full of crap, but he made me laugh with his story of quitting the family business and heading off to college, only to return two months later with a beer mug collection from the local bar and no degree. Personally, to me it sounded more like a wild streak of rebellion rather than a true identity crisis, but who was I to judge or belittle his struggle?

I knew it was late when we stood from the steps, our joints stiff and legs numb from sitting for so long, but when I'd stepped inside and seen the clock after he'd hugged me goodbye and saw me to the door, I'd nearly choked on my gasp. It had been just past three in the morning, and from what I'd known of Edward's work schedule, he'd have to be up again in just a few hours. I felt horrible for keeping him up so late, but a voice in the back of my mind kept telling me he wouldn't have stayed if he hadn't wanted to. Still, as I all but fell into bed, I made sure to set my alarm clock for six-fifteen. The least I could do was make sure he was fed and caffeinated before he had to head out for a long day at work.

I never heard the alarm clock. Either I'd set it wrong in my exhausted state and it didn't go off, or I'd slept right through it because when I awoke it was well after noon. I'd all but fallen out of the bed and raced down the stairs, my socks sliding on the slippery wood and nearly sending me down on my rear end a half dozen times before I finally hit the bottom and bolted out of the front door. His truck wasn't in the driveway where it had been earlier that morning, but there _was_ something sitting on the steps where we'd sat. I bent down to pick up the torn out piece of notebook paper and the trinket weighing it down. It looked like an old pocket watch, which confused the ever living hell out of me. I opened it and found that it wasn't a watch, but a compass.

"What the heck?" I muttered, looking it over for a second before turning my attention to the note it had been sitting upon.

_My uncle Carlisle gave this to me the year before I left for college. He told me that it would take me anywhere I wanted to go, but I had to choose which direction I wanted it to lead me in first. I told you last night that I'd quit the family business once. It wasn't just once. Carlisle wasn't talking about actual navigation when he gave this to me. He was talking about life in general and needing to make my own decisions about who I wanted to be and what I wanted out of my future. The situation was different, but the same sentiment applies to you. I know you feel lost, but sitting around just waiting to start really living your life won't get you anywhere. Make your life __yours__._

_Pick a direction, Bella. It'll lead you anywhere you want to go._

_Edward_

_P.S.- Compass needles always point due North. Remember that, or you might wind up with a collection of beer mugs like I did._


	5. Chapter 5

_Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight. We all know who does, and she's fab._

_A/N: So sorry for the delay in updates! To anyone who is currently looking for/buying a new home—I FEEL FOR YOU! This process is the pits! LOL. Enough of my whining. On with the read!_

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><p>I didn't see or hear from Edward again until Friday night. Monday—the day he'd left me the compass—I'd spent my evening on the porch swing, waiting for him to come home. He never did. His truck still wasn't there when I awoke early Tuesday morning, and it was never there any time I checked throughout the week either. As the days passed with no sign of him, I worried he'd gotten into an accident or had gotten hurt at work, but the hospital claimed to have no patients by his name.<p>

On Thursday afternoon, I tracked down the number to the office of his family's business, but then I felt like a stalker and couldn't bring myself to call. What would his poor family have thought when on the receiving end of a frantic call—made by some strange woman they'd never heard of, no less—looking for their son, nephew, brother, cousin... whatever? I resolved myself to wait patiently for him to return after that, and on Friday night he finally did.

I was almost through a killer session of Jeopardy on the TV, feeling like an utter genius at having amassed twice the winnings of the leading contestant—yes, I was keeping score of myself and clicking my pen as a buzzer so I couldn't cheat on the timing—when there was a knock at the door. I got up, not really even curious as to who it could be because I was so involved in when the next 'daily double' would be chosen that I couldn't be bothered with acknowledging that only two people would make their way onto my doorstep at night: Edward, or Charlie. I backed out of the room, my eyes locked on the stupid screen as the next answer was aired, and I clicked my pen just a millisecond before one of the contestants hit their buzzer.

"What is jaundice," I paused, waiting for the answer and then threw a victory punch in the air when I got it right.

"Ha! Suckers, you're too slow." I grinned as I threw my notebook and pen toward the couch.

As I quickly shuffled toward the door I wondered if maybe I should go to nursing school or something. I'd kicked butt in that "Side Effects May Include" category; completely annihilated it was more like it. I was still grinning to myself as I opened the door and nearly came face to...well, _fist_, with Edward. His head was turned to the side, looking toward my car in the driveway as he'd gone to knock on the door again, only I'd swung it open at the last second.

"Whoa there, buddy. I hear ya knocking, I don't need to feel it, too," I laughed after quickly dodging his loose fist. Talk about cosmic timing.

"Hi, sorry," he smiled. "Didn't hear you coming up to the door."

"It's okay," I snickered, stepping to the side. I looked over my shoulder as I led the way to the living room. "Where've you been? Everything okay?"

"Yeah, everything's fine. I swear I wasn't avoiding you or anything," he chuckled. "I was out running some errands Monday morning when my brother in-law called to tell me my sister had gone into labor earlier than expected. I left in a bit of a hurry and didn't realize I'd left the scrap of paper with my number on it on the kitchen counter until I was halfway to Seattle. Sorry about that."

"Are they okay? Your sister and the baby, I mean," I asked worriedly.

"Yeah, she was only two weeks early. Charlotte and Aiden, my nephew, are doing just fine." He smiled as he pulled out his cell phone and held it in my direction after hitting a few buttons. On the screen was a picture of a pretty woman's face beside an adorable baby. "Six pounds, two ounces, seventeen inches long, ten fingers, ten toes, and a set of incredibly mighty lungs."

"So cute," I cooed, unable to tame the face splitting grin stretched across my lips. "Tell them I said congratulations the next time you talk to them."

"Sure thing. Any word on the job front yet?" he asked, sliding his phone back into his pocket.

"Nope," I sighed, sinking further into the corner of the couch. "I went back out to Port Angeles on Wednesday though and found a few more places to put applications in at. Hopefully I'll get a call from somewhere sometime soon."

He moved to make himself more comfortable, and I froze as his foot hit the notebook on the floor. I grimaced as he bent down to retrieve it, watching as his gaze flicked from my messy scrawl of numbers to the television airing the end of the Jeopardy episode.

"Really, Bella?" he asked, his expression somewhere along the lines of appalled amusement as he held the notebook up in front of him for me to see. "This is what you do on a Friday night? Amass a small fortune in imaginary game show winnings?"

I bit my lip, trying not to laugh. Oh if he'd only borne firsthand witness to the spectacle of me using my pen as my buzzer and shouting out my answers in the form of questions to Alex Trebbek as though he could hear me. The thought was simultaneously mortifying and ungodly hilarious.

"Maybe?" He pursed his lips to keep from grinning, but I could see the amusement dancing in his eyes as I snatched the book away from him. "Hey, don't knock it until you've been stuck home with no social life and no cable TV either. Jeopardyand Wheel_-_of_-_Fortunekept my mom and me entertained many a night."

He laughed, but it was short lived. The truth behind my words meant in jest was impossible for either of us to ignore.

"Bella, you're twenty-one not seventy, and you're not stuck home anymore. Go crazy, live on the edge for a while, be wild the way most people your age are." He became more animated with each word until he was standing and nearly pacing the floor. "It's Friday night. Let's do something. What do you want to do?"

"I don't know." I couldn't come up with a single thing. I lived my life the way I had down in Phoenix; boring, simple, and repetitive. It was a shell I found myself completely incapable of breaking out of.

"If you could do anything in the world, what would it be? What would _you_ enjoy doing?"

"I don't know, Edward!" I wailed, throwing my hands up in the air. "I don't know what I'd enjoy doing because I haven't been able to enjoyanything for myself for years! I don't even know what normal people my age would be out doing because I haven't been able to connect with someone my own age since I was a teenager."

"There's no such thing as normal when it comes to people, Bella. Grass being green is normal. Dirt being brown is normal. Rain and snow being wet is _normal_, but there's no such thing as a normal person. Everyone's different, and there's nothing remarkably abnormal about you so get that crap out of your head."

"Average, then." I didn't get what the big deal was, but his sudden anger over the stupid word was making me tear up. He caught me trying to discretely dry my eyes, and he lowered himself to a crouching position in front of me.

"I've listened to every word you've ever said to me, and I get it. You were in a situation where your life revolved around someone else's wants and needs and you lost track of your own, but that's over." A tear streamed down my face as he grasped my hands in his rough, calloused ones. "You have to live a little, Bella. For _you_, not for anyone else."

"I don't know how," I cried, because I really didn't.

I watched game shows because it's what my mom enjoyed, even though I had cable now. I still ate soup out of a can and frozen dinners because after my mom wasn't been able to eat anymore, I didn't see the need or have the energy to cook for just myself, even though I now had plenty of time and energy to do so. I still bought lactose-free dairy products, even though I wasn't lactose intolerant but my mom had been, and I'd become accustomed to the taste of it. She'd been gone for months, but I continued to live my life as though she were still in my care because I didn't know how else to live anymore.

"C'mon," he said as he stood and held a hand out in my direction. "I'll show you."

Never, in a million years when I'd placed my hand in his and allowed him to pull me up from the couch, did I think we'd end up in the middle of the woods, parked in front of a cliff at least fifteen feet above a very black, and possibly very cold, small lake.

"Where are you going?" I asked as he killed the engine and opened his door.

"For a swim. Come on." He shut the door and made his way to the front of the truck. In the moonlight filtering through the canopy I could just make out the smirk on his face as he raised his hands and gestured with his fingers for me to join him.

"Spontaneity is the spice of life," he called to me. "Live a little with me, Bella."

I took a deep breath and considered what I was about to do. I was at a theoretical crossroad: stay in the truck and continue doing absolutely nothing with my life, or get out and really live it.

"He's crazy... _I'm _crazy," I muttered as I undid my seatbelt. "God, that water's gonna be freezing. What am I _doing_?"

"Atta girl! I knew you had it in you," he grinned, holding out his hand for me.

It wasn't exactly cold outside, but it wasn't all that warm either. Just thinking about hitting the possibly icy water below made my entire body break out in goose bumps. The thought didn't seem to phase Edward in the least as he quickly toed off his shoes and socks. It also didn't seem to bother him that neither of us had swimsuits on. I was still floundering, my gaze furtively dancing between the black water, the edge of the cliff, and him as he stripped all the way down to his boxers.

I wanted to kick myself in the ass as I stood there fidgeting self consciously. A bra and panties wasn't any more revealing than a typical bikini, at least the ones I was wearing weren't. I didn't exactly have a stockpile of cute, sexy, matching ensembles or anything. Just plain cotton, in plain colors with the occasional striped set mixed in. I think I might have had one pair that had some floral design on them. Go me.

"You coming, or not?" he asked, teasing, as he stood at the very edge of the rock cliff.

_Just strip already. He couldn't give a shit about your old lady panties, and it's dark out anyway. People your age do this all the time. It's nothing, _I told myself, trying to boost my confidence. It didn't work. I felt entirely exposed as I made my way out of the shadows and into the faint moonlight where he stood waiting for me, one arm crossed over my chest, the other futilely trying to cover my lower region.

"Cute underwear," he chuckled, winking.

"Shut up," I muttered, bumping him with my shoulder.

It had the desired effect he'd aimed for, though. I laughed, albeit slightly, and loosened up a tiny bit. I peeked over the edge and felt my stomach drop.

"Jesus that's a far fall," I breathed.

"Do you trust me?"

I looked over at him, wary. "Maybe."

"Let all your inhibitions go and take a leap of faith."

I stared into his eyes, pools of ink in the darkness without a hint of the deep green hue they usually shone with, and found myself unable to _not_ trust him. My stomach was tied in knots and anxiety lit my nerves on fire, but I trusted Edward for some inexplicable reason. It felt good to be able to do that, to be able to trust someone without hesitation or reserve, to not have a reason not to.

I took a deep, steeling breath and placed my trembling hand in his. With one step forward, our toes nearly hung off the ledge and a spike of adrenaline surged through my veins. I could hear my heartbeat pulsing in my ears, drowning out the rustling of leaves in the breeze. We were only on the brink of a terrifying plunge, but I felt like I was standing on the precipice of so much more. In a way, it felt as though the moment my feet left the ground, I'd be leaving behind all that had been weighing me down, all that had been tethering me to a life I hadn't wanted and hadn't chosen for myself, but couldn't regret and couldn't break away from.

By taking this plunge, I'd free myself.

"On the count of three?" I asked, turning my gaze from the water far down below back to him.

"On three," he nodded, giving my hand a slight squeeze.

I smiled and together we counted. On three, we threw ourselves off the cliff and soared.

For not nearly long enough, I felt weightless, like nothing could touch me. I'd never felt anything like it; it was exhilarating, and the feeling didn't subside after I'd surfaced. I looked back up at the overhang of the cliff as I treaded water and laughed. So this was what it was like to truly live... I liked it. A lot.

By the time we fled the water and raced back to our dry clothes with chattering teeth and trembling bodies, I'd jumped off the cliff at least a half a dozen more times, loving the weightlessness and euphoria I felt as I flew through the air toward the water. When we reached the truck, Edward tossed me a pullover fleece to wear, noticing I was still shaking from the cold. It was a sweet gesture and one that was entirely foreign to me—being cared for.

There was a strange feeling beginning to trickle through me as he navigated our way home. I couldn't define it, or even identify it as something I'd felt before once upon a long time ago, but it was there. Every time he smiled at me, or laughed at something I said, it was there, warming me from the inside out. Part of me tried to reason that it was just what friendship felt like, that I'd felt the same thing from all the friends I'd had in my early teenage years, but the other part of me, a much smaller part of me, hesitantly believed what I was feeling was something more than friendship for Edward. That thought scared me a little.

Edward was thirty. It wasn't his age that unnerved me so much as it was how off-kilter we were in terms of where we stood in our separate lives. He had his life together, knew what a great family was like to have, and on some level, probably wanted one of his own sometime in the near future. I, on the other hand, had no idea what having family really meant and felt like, didn't even know if I wanted to ever have kids after what I'd been through, and my life was about as uncertain and disastrously messy as it could get. We were at completely opposite ends of the spectrum, and the more I thought about it, the more I could plainly see that my mess would never fit into his organized and orderly life. Not as anything more than what we already were. Thinking of possibly feeling something more than friendship for him while knowing all the reasons I shouldn't was borderline terrifying.

"Looks like you've got a visitor." Edward's voice pulled me out of my thoughts that were quickly heading toward a downward spiral, and my stomach dropped as my eyes turned forward.

Sitting right in front of my house, alongside the curb and empty of its driver, was Charlie's police cruiser. My eyes darted between Edward and the ominous car as we approached it. I felt like vomiting. I wanted to tell him to turn around, offer him any excuse whatsoever to keep us out late enough that Charlie would no longer be there waiting for me when we returned, but Edward pulled up in his driveway and parked sooner than I could make my vocal cords put volume to my words. My face paled as Edward looked at me; I could feel the blood drain away the moment I spotted Charlie in my peripheral vision, stalking down my porch steps.

"Thank you for tonight. I had fun," I rambled quickly as I fumbled with my seatbelt buckle, making Edward's bewildered expression deepen. I couldn't blame him; my rapid switch in demeanor must have given him whiplash.

"I'll see you tomorrow."

With that, I hopped out of the truck and ran across the yard between our houses to head Charlie off. If there was a scene to be made, I didn't want Edward bearing witness to it.

"Where the hell have you been?" Charlie demanded. "I've been calling here for hours with no answer, and I come here to find your car in the driveway but you're nowhere to be found? Do you have _any _idea how worried I've been?"

I'd made it to the top step of my porch while keeping my mouth shut tight, but when he grabbed a hold of my arm, I spun around and ripped it out of his hold. It didn't even dawn on me that Edward had yet to exit his truck and head into his own home.

"Don't you _ever_ grab me like that," I spat with fire in my eyes.

"Then answer me when I ask you a question."

"Who do you think you are demanding anything from me? I owe you not a goddamn thing. Do you hear me? _Nothing_!"

"Bella," he sighed, rubbing his hands roughly over his face. "I'm your _father_, and fathers worry when they can't find their kids."

"Ha... _ha_!" I scoffed, incredulous. "You really expect me to stand here and believe you were _worried_? After everything you've done in the past, you expect me to believe that horseshit?"

I shook my head and began pacing short lines across the porch as he looked at me with solemn eyes. I hated that look; the one that, as a kid, had conveyed to me when he was truly apologetic for something he'd said or done. The one that made me forgive him for yelling at me when I'd done nothing wrong, or failing to remember plans we'd made, or anything else that was just as inconsequential anymore.

Why now? Why did he have to claim he cared _now_ when he'd made it obscenely obvious he hadn't given a damn since the day he left me in Phoenix with my dying mother? Every inch of me writhed and sparked with the anger and hatred I felt for him, and the only escape those feelings had were through my tears which I found myself unable to stop from building in my eyes.

"I _was_ worried, Bella."

I rounded on him, maniacal, incredulous laughter bubbling out of me as tears streamed down my face.

"You didn't even know I'd left for three days!" I yelled, my face twisted into an ugly snarl. "How can I believe you were worried you couldn't find me for a few hours when just a week ago I'd been MIA for three whole fucking days and you didn't have a damn clue about it?"

"What do you want me to do?" he yelled back. "I'm doing the best I can, Bella! I'm trying to give you your space, and not call or stop by all the time! I want to fix things, but how can I when you won't let me in?"

"I don't want you to fix anything! There's nothing left to fix!" I wailed, pounding my fists against his chest in rage as I continued to scream. "You went and got a new family and forgot I even existed! How could you do that to me?"

I never heard or saw Edward bound up the steps. One moment I was pulling my wrists free from my father's grasp so I could hit him again, and the next I was being pulled away from him and enclosed within strong arms as sobs wracked my entire frame. I felt more than heard Edward speaking to my father, the rumble of his chest vibrating against my back as he tightened his arms around me. It felt like just moments later my feet were lifted off the ground and I was being jostled with every step he took. I wrapped my arms around his neck and clung to him with everything I had in me.

I cried that night for reasons I'd sworn to myself I'd never shed another tear for as long as I lived. I cried for the loss of my father, for the loss of the man that had at one time been my best friend, my protector, my confidant, and my own personal hero. As abstract as the concept was, I mourned the loss of a person who hadn't yet physically passed on, but had died in my mind and heart. Through it all, until I'd calmed sometime in the early morning hours, Edward held me.

My breathing was still shaky, but the tears had long since dried out by the time he spoke.

"Are you still awake?" His question was a mere whisper, purposefully meant not to wake me if I had fallen asleep.

I nodded in answer, telling him I was. In truth I was exhausted, and I wouldn't have been opposed to falling asleep curled into his chest right where I was, but sleep hadn't found me yet. I doubted it would for quite a while either.

"If I ask you to do something for me, will you?" I nodded again, too tired to contemplate what he could possibly ask of me.

"Stop hiding from me."

My breath hitched and every muscle in my body locked up. I was sure he'd felt the change, but he just rubbed my arm in soft strokes as he continued speaking.

"Whatever it is that happened in the past that you feel you have to keep a secret from me, you don't. I'll listen, Bella. However bad you think it is, you don't have to carry it alone the way you've been trying to. You can lean on me, it's okay."

With each gentle pass of his hand over my fleece clad arm, the muscles in my body slowly returned to a relaxed state. My breathing returned to normal, and I felt comfortable resting my head in the nook of his shoulder once again. All the while I stayed silent and replayed his words over and over again in my head.

Edward wasn't asking for something outlandish or beyond my abilities. He was only asking me to do what I'd been telling myself all evening I already did—trust him, the way I hadn't been able to trust anyone for years on end. No matter what I said he'd be there, I knew he would. I didn't know _how_ I knew that, I just did.

I'd long ago lost count of the number of nights I spent wishing and praying for things that never came true: for my father to return, for my friends to call or answer when I called, for my mother to get better, to wake up from the nightmare my life had become. This night, however, I prayed extra hard with my eyes closed in hopes that this one, just this _one_ prayer would be answered.

_Dear God... please don't let my trusting him be a mistake. _


	6. Chapter 6

_Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight. We all know who does, and she's fab._

* * *

><p>Mornings suck.<p>

I've never been a morning person in general, but waking up after a severe crying jag was just the pits. It didn't help that I hadn't fallen asleep until after sunrise and had woken only a few hours afterward either. My eyes were sore and swollen, my nose was stuffy, my entire face was puffy... I felt—and undoubtedly looked—like shit. I was still exhausted, but the house shaking snoring that was taking place on the opposite side of the couch of me was impossible to sleep through. On any other morning I might have found it amusingly entertaining, perhaps cute even, but not _this_ morning.

I didn't wake Edward before I dragged myself out of his house and across the yard to my own. For one, I doubted I would have been able to with how heavy he was sleeping, but more than that, I wasn't prepared to face him right after having spent the entire night giving him every detail of my depressing life from the moment I moved to Phoenix, to when I came back. He now effectively knew every part of me; the good, the bad, and the very, very ugly. I was no longer in hiding, as he'd put it, and I wasn't sure how I felt about that, nor was I in the frame of mind to puzzle it out at that very moment.

It was raining when I stepped out his door, which surprisingly didn't bother me. It suited my mood. I ducked my head and walked as quickly as my tired body would allow. I didn't happen to notice the figure sitting on my porch swing until I'd lifted my head once under the cover of the porch roof.

"For shit's sake, Charlie," I groaned, my voice weak and raspy from the combination of crying all night and not getting enough sleep. "I can't get into it with you again today. Not today, not now, please go. I'm asking nicely."

"I'm not here to fight, Bella," he sighed, shaking his head but not moving to lift himself from the swing. He just looked at me once again with those solemn, remorseful eyes that no longer affected me as they once routinely had. I knew better than to believe him now.

"I don't want to fight, or yell, or be the reason you cry like that ever again."

I rubbed my hands roughly over my face, torn between sagging against the porch support beam next to me and walking inside and slamming the door on him and forgetting he was even out there by the time I hit the mattress.

"I've been sitting out here all night waiting for you to come home."

I slumped against the beam and rested my head against it as I closed my eyes, too tired to keep them open as I spoke.

"Why? What was so important for you to say that it couldn't wait a day, or a week, or even a few months? That's how long it was in the end, right? Months? What was it, six or eight? I can't remember."

"I failed you. I get it, Isabella," he groaned. "You don't have to drive that point home every time we speak to make me feel guilty. I already do, all the time."

"If you're asking me to forgive you, the answer is no." I didn't even bother to open my eyes. I didn't care enough to see what effect my words had on him, if any at all. "Too many times, Charlie. Too many times I've forgiven you and forced myself to believe that things would be different, that _you_ would be different."

"I'm not asking you to forgive me. I know that's too much to ask for. I'm just asking you to let me be a part of your life—_some _part of your life. Last night... seeing you like that... it tore me apart. You've always been so strong, and I just..."

He fell silent, and my eyes cracked open. Through my bleary vision I could see him hunched over, his head hung low and hands clasped between his knees.

"You just what?"

"I just thought you were angry with me. I deserve that much, I know that, but I didn't realize it went so much deeper than that." He looked up at me with those pitiful eyes again, and by some small miracle, I managed to refrain from rolling my own.

"Charlie, I really am too tired for this..."

"I know, I can see that. I just wanted to tell you I'm sorry for everything," he said as he finally stood from the swing.

"You could've said that in a phone call, you know." He nodded, his lips turning down into a half frown as he did so.

"Yeah, I could've, but after watching Edward carry you away, I doubted you'd ever answer the phone or door for me again." There was a high probability that he was right in that assumption, but I didn't confirm or deny it for him. "I worried more about that sitting here all night than I did over anything else in the hour I'd sat here wondering where you were."

"What were you doing here anyway?" I asked as I pulled my keys from my pocket and sluggishly stepped away from the beam I'd been leaning against.

"I came to ask you to come over for dinner on your birthday next week. The offer's still on the table," he smiled, albeit a strained one.

"I'll think about it."

"I meant what I said, Bella. I want to be a part of your life, whatever part you'll allow me, and it's not just me. Sue and the kids would like it, too."

I doubted that, but I kept my mouth shut. I found it hard to believe that he would've spoken of me with any degree of frequency when Edward, who'd lived right next door to them for two years, hadn't even known I'd existed at all before meeting me.

"Like I said, I'll think about it." Later... much, much later. Perhaps when I was old and gray later.

When I finally made it up to my bed, I collapsed on it, still fully clothed in my jeans, sneakers, and Edward's snotted up fleece. I didn't care. The pillow and soft mattress welcomed me with open fibers and I was out cold within moments of hitting them.

I awoke much later in the day to a highly annoying tickling sensation on my nose. I kept swatting at it, thinking it was something on my pillow or a strand of my hair, but every time I did, the strangest sound would filter into my ears. It sounded almost like a faint wheeze, or a... _stifled laugh_.

"Either I forgot to lock my front door and my kindly neighbor is really just a pain in the ass in disguise, or I forgot I own a cat... which would be bad because I'm allergic."

Edward laughed loudly at my groggy declaration, and I drowsily opened my eyes to see him resting with his torso on the opposite side of the bed, a long piece of string from god knows where dangling from his fingers.

"Yeah, you should get in a better habit of locking your doors," he chuckled. "You sleep like the dead, by the way, anyone ever tell you that?"

"I wouldn't talk if I were you, _lumberjack_," I shot back, a small smirk crossing my lips.

"Was I that bad?" I nodded, laughing silently. "Sorry. It can get pretty gruesome when old men like me try to pull all-nighters."

"How long have you been here?" I asked, moving over so he could climb in. I wasn't anywhere near ready to get out of the bed just yet. He looked at his watch as he kicked off his shoes and laid beside me.

"About two hours. I knocked a few times earlier in the afternoon, but by five I figured I'd better check if you were still breathing."

"What time is it?" I asked, my brow furrowed.

"Seven-thirty," he answered, reaching out to pass his finger gently across the bags under my eye. I could feel the puffiness that still remained there when he touched it. I must've looked a horrid mess, but he didn't seem put off by it any. "Did you sleep enough? Do you want me to go and let you go back to sleep?"

"No, I'm good," I answered, and then abruptly yawned. "I probably slept too much, actually."

"How about some dinner then? You haven't eaten all day. My treat, anywhere you want to go."

I whimpered and burrowed further into my pillow while shaking my head.

"I don't want to go anywhere. Can we just stay here?" I pouted. Yes, _pouted_ because the thought of getting out of bed was just that dire.

"That's unfair, you know," he teased, tapping my protruding bottom lip. "How am I supposed to say no to a face like that?"

"You're not supposed to. That's the whole point."

"Okay, dinner and a movie in it is. What's it gonna be? Chinese, pizza, burgers and fries?"

"Mmm..." My lips pursed to the side and one eye squeezed shut as I pondered what I was in the mood for. "Pizza. Meat Lover's, extra cheese, and don't forget the packets of crushed red pepper."

He looked surprised, and he brought his hand to his chest in a very overly done, theatrical way. "A girl after my own heart."

I laughed as he hoisted himself out of the bed and wiggled his feet back into his sneakers. "Where are your keys?"

"What for?"

"So I can lock your door behind me." His brow quirked at me. "Haven't you heard? There's been a rash number of break-ins recently by a psycho parading around as a kindly neighbor. Apparently he likes to enter houses with unlocked doors and wake the sleeping occupants by tickling their noses. They've dubbed him the Sleep Swindler."

"You're such a 'tard," I cracked up. "I think I dropped them somewhere on the table by the stairs."

"I'll be back in a bit. Don't go falling asleep on me again," he called out from the bottom of the stairs.

"I won't," I hollered back. I totally did, too, but only for a few minutes. By the time he came back I'd showered, changed into comfy pajamas, and started a load of wash—into which I'd tossed his fleece pullover that I'd sullied up.

We'd just sat down on the couch, ready to plate up a few slices of pizza for ourselves, when Edward cleared his throat while tapping his paper plate against the palm of his hand.

"Are you just pretending to be okay, or are you really okay right now?"

I sighed and plopped a slice of pizza on my plate. Was I okay? I really didn't know, and I really didn't want to think about it either. All I wanted to do was eat the delicious smelling pizza in front of me and veg-out with my friend while watching a movie.

"I'm... okay," I answered with a slight shrug. "Not great, but okay. Can we just watch the movies? I really, _really_ don't want to think or talk about anything heavy tonight. I need a break from it."

"Yeah, we can do that."

That's just what we did. I didn't think about the past, or the uncertainty of my future. I didn't think about the confrontation with Charlie the night before, his visit earlier that morning, or his invitation. I didn't think about how I'd spent the entire previous night bawling my eyes out in Edward's arms either. It was a calm and peaceful night.

Sunday, however, was a completely different story. It was as if I couldn't escape those heavy, plaguing thoughts no matter how hard I tried.

I'd awoken to an early morning phone call from Charlie, asking me once again to come to their home for dinner the night of my birthday. I was just as reluctant to give him an answer one way or the other as I'd been when he'd first brought it up. He'd even gone as far as to tell me that Leah was coming home from college for the weekend to celebrate the occasion. As if that made it any more appealing. What did he expect me to say? _'Yay! I get to finally meet my new step-sister that's been my step-sister for two years!' _Yeah, it wasn't happening. I wasn't excited about the prospect, not even a little bit.

If I was being honest with myself, in regards to Sue's kids, I was being petty and jealous. For what reason I couldn't answer. I knew what Charlie was really like, what he was capable of. If anything I should have been afraid for them—and I suppose somewhere deep down I was. They hadn't asked to be brought into the situation. There was no fault I could lay on their shoulders for any part of it, and I would feel horrible if they became unsuspecting victims of his callousness as I'd been. That didn't stop me from being jealous of the fact that they had what I hadn't since I was seventeen—my father; and not the version I'd come to know, but the image or mirage of the man I'd spent my childhood believing him to be. Such a stupid thing to be jealous of, but there it was.

I spent a good half hour pacing around the house before deciding to work out my aggravation in a more productive way. I tossed on the rattiest clothes I could find, dug some supplies out of the utility closet, and set to work on cleaning the house from floor to ceiling. I dusted and swept, mopped and vacuumed, and scrubbed and polished until everything in sight gleamed. It wasn't until nearly six o'clock at night that I'd finally exhausted myself and put the last of the cleaning supplies away. I was in the middle of pushing food around the plastic frozen dinner container when I heard Edward's truck pull up in his driveway. Not five full minutes passed before there was a knock at the door and I schlepped my way over to answer it.

"Hey," he greeted, smiling.

"Hi." My answering greeting wasn't anywhere near as lively as I stepped to the side to allow him in.

"You okay?" I nodded silently and shut the door behind him. "Why does it smell like a bottle of Pine-Sol exploded in here?"

"I cleaned. Hungry? I was just having dinner." We were almost to the kitchen when his hand curled lightly over my shoulder and he turned me toward him. His eyes danced over my face for only a moment.

"What's wrong? Talk to me, Bella."

"Nothing, I'm fine. I'm just tired," I replied, turning and heading back to my rapidly cooling dinner. I wasn't even hungry, and I couldn't say why I'd even heated it up to start with.

"_That's _what you're eating for dinner?" he griped, pulling out the chair beside me. "That's not real food."

He pushed the plastic container toward the middle of the table with the back of his hand and snatched the fork out of my hand. I watched it land in the watery potatoes before my chair was spun and I found myself looking at Edward's worried expression.

"No hiding, remember?" I deflated, weary straight down to the bone as I sank into the chair. "What provoked you to make this place smell like a giant pine tree air freshener?"

"I don't know... it's stupid." I sighed exasperatedly when he spun his hand in a circle, as if to say, _'Get on with it'_. "Charlie and Sue want me to come over for dinner on my birthday. He brought it up yesterday and called to ask me again today."

"Yesterday? Did he call while I was out getting the pizza or something?"

"No," I shook my head, rubbing my tired eyes. "He sat on the porch all night waiting for me after the fight. He says he wants to be a part of my life and me be a part of theirs and whatnot, but I just... I can't believe anything he says to me anymore. I hate this, Edward. I hate not being able to trust my own father. I can't even bring myself to believe him when he says he's sorry because it doesn't _feel _like he is."

"You know my take on this already, Bella," he said sympathetically. "I meant what I said to you the other night. What he wants doesn't matter. He made his choice on where you stood in his life years ago. It's not his choice to make now, it's yours."

"_Ugh_," I groaned. "I don't know what the hell to do."

He took a hold of my hands and rubbed them soothingly. It felt nice, but did little to relieve the strenuous tension trapped in my body.

"People canchange, but that doesn't mean they do. If you feel it's too much of a risk to yourself to let him show you whether or not he has, then that's his cross to bear; not your own. You're entitled to what you feel toward him. What he did was inexcusable. A father should _never_ turn his back on his child in a situation like that. Not many would blame you for cutting ties completely with him."

"It doesn't make me any better of a person if I walk away from him."

"It doesn't make you any worse of one if you do either, Bella. You have to look out for number one, yourself, first and foremost. Speaking of which, how 'bout some real dinner and a little fresh air away from all this synthetic pine?"

"That sounds... good, actually," I nodded, feeling slightly better than I had throughout most of the day. "I need a shower before I go anywhere though."

He laughed lightly. "Take your time. I'm going to go home for a shower and change real quick, too."

"Meet you outside in like thirty?" I asked as I stood and followed him out of the kitchen. I turned toward the steps as he made his way toward the front door and paused. "Hey, Edward?"

"Yeah?"

"Thanks," I smiled. "For... well, everything lately."

He winked. "Anytime, Bella. That's what friends are for."

I wondered at how many times I'd prayed to have someone like Edward in my life. Not that I didn't need him now, because I truly did and he was the best friend I could ask for, but I'd really needed someone like him back then, too. Someone I could've relied on during the hard times for no other reason than to just have someone there to talk to, to confide in. Maybe if I had I wouldn't be so messed up now.

As I shut the water off and stepped out to dry and dress, I forced myself to stop pondering over it. It was pointless to think myself in circles when the only thing that mattered was right now. The past was over; I may have come out of it scathed, but I'd made it through the hardest part just the same. It didn't matter if I hadn't had a friend or a support system back then. I had one now.

Dressed in a simple pairing of a camisole and cardigan with a pair of jeans, I took one last glimpse in the mirror before heading down the stairs. I'd gone for casual and was relieved to see he'd done so as well when I stepped out of the front door to find him waiting for me on the porch.

"You look nice," he smiled, standing from the swing.

"You, too. So what's the dining venue tonight?" I asked as we made our way down the steps and across the yard to his truck. "The Lodge? Diner?... Chinese?"

"Would you be against heading out to Port Angeles? There's a bar and grill out there that's got pretty good food and live entertainment."

"I've never been to a bar," I admitted, laughing when he did a double take.

"Seriously?" I nodded, still snickering. "Well, then. It's a definite must now."

The atmosphere walking into the bar was loud and nearly claustrophobic with the amount of people held within. It wasn't so much the volume of the music being played by the band on the stage or the chatter of the crowds of people gathered around tables that caught me off guard, but the sheer volume of one giant man's voice as he belted out Edward's name from clear across the bar the moment we stepped through the door. I found myself clutching the back of Edward's shirt as we made our way through the throngs of local patrons, suddenly and inexplicably nervous.

"What's up, man?" the big guy boomed, greeting Edward with a one armed hug. "We didn't expect to see you here tonight. And who's this pretty little thing at your side?"

"Bella, this is Emmett. One of my buddies from work," he introduced, pulling me into his side so I wasn't half hiding behind him.

"It's nice to meet you," I said, holding out my hand. He grinned boyishly and took it.

"Pleasure's all mine, Bella."

Edward took my hand in his and we followed behind Emmett to the back corner where the rest of their group of friends was gathered. I was a little overwhelmed throughout the introduction process, and I worried that at some point during the night I'd forget someone's name, or call them by the wrong one. There were just too many to keep straight: Emmett, Rosalie, Alice, Jasper, Stefan, Paul, James, and Vicky.

I felt completely out of my element being the stranger in such a large group of friends. Not a one of them were unwelcoming by any means. The opposite was true, in fact. They all seemed incredibly friendly. I just felt out of place, and it made it difficult for me to interact with them. I felt awkward randomly jumping into any of the conversations going on around me so I just sat there like a silent sentinel.

"I'm going to go get us some drinks and a menu. Anything in particular you want?" Edward asked. I shook my head. I wouldn't have been able to name any drink in particular if I'd tried.

"Whatever you're having is fine."

I watched him walk away and wondered why I didn't just tag along with him. It was pathetic how uptight I was. I'd never been like that in groups before, even if I hadn't known the majority of the people around me. I hadn't exactly been a social butterfly in my youth by any means, either, but I'd been a far cry from the wallflower I'd become in recent years. Despite what I was sure was enthralling conversation flowing around me, the only thing I found myself engrossed with was picking invisible lint off my jeans.

"We don't bite. Promise."

I lifted my eyes to see Edward's friend Emmett hunched over, hands on his knees to bring himself down to my eyelevel. It was impossible not to smile, faint as it was, in response to his boyish grin.

"Are you always this quiet?" he asked when I failed to come up with any kind of witty response whatsoever. Words were failing me.

"Pretty much," I grimaced, embarrassed.

"Loosen up," he laughed. "It's all good. We're all reasonable folk here."

"Sorry... I'm just... I don't think I fit in very well." And cue the nervous fidgeting.

"That's not even possible," he shook his head. "See this group here? We're about the most mismatched bunch of misfits possible. We accept everyone. You just have to be willing to give us a chance, too."

I nodded and smiled, words once again failing me. The silence seemed to stretch on between us for light years that in reality was only seconds as my eyes darted around, desperately looking for a topic of conversation. My skin was nearly crawling with my discomfort in the awkward silence when my eyes landed on the pool stick he'd abandoned next to his beer oAn the billiard table.

"Are you good?" I asked, and then instantly felt stupid as his brow furrowed. "At playing pool, I mean."

He laughed as he shrugged. "Good enough to be on a team. We're currently ranked third out of twenty leagues. What about you? Play much?"

"No. I've never," I shook my head while twisting the hem of my cardigan around one of my fingers.

"Really?" I nodded in answer. He seemed surprised but shrugged it off and jabbed a thumb in the direction of the empty table. "Wanna give it a go?"

"Sure."

I slid off my chair and followed behind him to the end of the table, listening as he listed off the basics of the game. It seemed simple enough; the type of the first ball you sink, either stripes or solids, is what you try to clear off the table for the rest of the game; shoot for the eight ball last; sink the cue ball and the other player can place it anywhere they wish behind the "head string", or breaking point, on their next turn; sink the cue ball while shooting for the eight ball, or sink the eight ball before you've cleared the table of your balls and you lose. Simple enough... or so I thought.

"Urgh! What am I doing wrong?" Emmett just laughed as I threw my arm up in the air after I botched my second shot. The cue ball didn't even go anywhere remotely near the ball I'd been aiming for.

"For starters, you're letting Emmett teach you." I spun around at the sound of Edward's voice and smiled as I took the drink he was holding out to me. "He's the king of the accidental shot. Never gets the ball he's aiming for, but sinks one somewhere else on the table. It's baffling."

"Says the man who's currently ranking dead last in our division."

"And you and I both know that's only because I haven't been making it to the tourneys. Let's not forget that I held second overall in the entire league for four years running."

"Sure, sure... impress the girl with tales of the glory days of your youth old man."

"Old man? I can still wipe the table with your ass, chump."

It was like watching a tennis game of wits. My eyes darted back and forth between the pair of them, laughter bubbling up inside of me with each served retort.

"Let's see it, then, hotshot. Better dust those skills of yours off before you embarrass yourself in front of the pretty little lady."

"Care to put your money where your mouth is? Twenty bucks says I can take you with Bella here making all the shots for me."

"Oh you're on, dude. I'm gonna laugh my way straight to the bank... or at least the bar."

I watched in horror as the pair threw two crisp twenties down onto the edge of the table. They were serious, and to make matters worse, they'd garnered the attention of their entire group of friends. I couldn't do this. I couldn't let him lose, and he definitely would if he was serious about me taking all of his shots for him.

"Edward, I don't think this is a good idea," I said quietly, pulling him aside with a light grip on his arm. "There's no way I'll win."

"It's fine," he chuckled. "It's only twenty bucks, and it's all in good fun. Besides, I taught his wife everything she knows, and she hustles him constantly."

My hands started to sweat as I watched Paul—at least, I think his name was Paul—rack the balls. There wasn't enough liquid courage in my glass to give me hope of not walking away from the table as a big fat loser. There was, however, enough in it to loosen me up out of my rigid stance.

Edward and I stood off to the side as we waited for Emmett to break. His hands were on my shoulders as he stood behind me, gently massaging the tension out of them, further limbering me up.

"Were you any good at geometry in high school?" he asked, ducking his head down to speak softly in my ear.

"I was okay at it, I guess. Not that I remember much about it."

"Billiards is all about geometry. It's all angles and figuring out where to hit the cue so it goes where you want it to. If you can picture the trajectory lines on the table between the cue, the ball you want, and the pocket you want, you'll almost never miss a shot."

"Trajectory lines... right." I scoffed and tilted my head to look up at him after Emmett broke, sinking two balls instantly. "I really hope you didn't need that twenty for anything important."

"Just relax and have fun. Don't worry about the twenty. I've taken plenty of bills from him over the years."

It was unnerving having Edward practically hovering over me at each turn, feeling the length of his tall frame press against my back as he adjusted my aim and walked me through each shot. I could feel the heat in my face but was unsure as to whether it was from the alcohol in my system, or just the effect he was having on me. It was impossible to concentrate when he'd duck his head beside mine and whisper something about how much force to use, or what area of the ball I needed to hit to make it go into the pocket.

It was my sixth, maybe seventh turn when I found myself leaning over the table, Edward hovering close behind me and Emmett standing beyond the opposite side of the table. I was trying as hard as I could to ignore both Edward's body heat and Emmett's teasing jabs as I lined up to sink the yellow one ball in the middle pocket, right in front of Emmett. I had this, it was a complete straight shot. All I had to do was tap it and I'd sink it. That's when it happened. In the worst twist of fate known to mankind, Edward ducked his head just as I pulled the cue stick back, intending to take my shot.

"You smell really pretty tonight."

His whisper shot through me like a bolt of lightening and my arm jerked the cue stick forward. I watched in absolute horror as the cue ball jumped up off the table... and nailed Emmett square in the crotch.

"Oh my god! I'm so sorry!" I shrieked, dropping the stick like it was on fire as everyone around the table burst out laughing. "Are you okay?"

"Fine," he squeaked in a high pitched voice, buckled over with both of his hands between his legs.

"Oh, man! That was the shot of the century!" Someone guffawed, followed by someone else chortling, "Someone should've gotten that on video! That was the best nutcracker I've ever seen! Did you see his face?"

"Do you want me to get you some ice from the bar or something? God, Emmett, I'm _so _sorry. I swear I didn't do that on purpose," I rambled as he stood up straight, his face still contorted in pain as he grimaced at the ceiling.

I felt horrible, and I was two seconds away from asking Edward to bring me home so I could drown in my mortification when he started laughing even harder from beside me. I had no idea what he was laughing at until he pointed at the pocket right in front of me. I looked down, confused, and my eyes nearly popped out of my head when I saw the bright yellow ball resting in the pocket. Somehow, the cue ball had bounced off of Emmett and knocked the one ball into the pocket opposite of the one I'd originally been aiming for.

"I think he's been defeated for reigning champion of the accidental shot."

"Are you kidding me?" Emmett wailed. "She nailed me in the jewels _and _made the shot? What the hell kind of beginner's luck is that?"

"That right there wasn't luck," one of the women laughed, wiping her tear smudged mascara from beneath her eyes. I think it was his wife. "_That_ was pure talent. Damn I love her already!"

If someone would have told me that I'd gain Edward's friends' acceptance by nearly castrating one of them in a game of pool upon walking into that bar, I seriously would've suggested they seek the nearest mental facility to have their sanity evaluated. As it stood, that's _exactly_ what happened.

That Sunday night, I walked into a bar in Port Angeles being able to count the number of friends I had on one single, solitary finger. One poorly made bet, a jump shot straight to the family jewels, a few buckets of beer, and a bag of ice later, I walked out needing two hands to list the people I now counted as friends.


	7. Chapter 7

_Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight. We all know who does, and she's fab._

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><p>Edward's insane. His friends and family are, too, for that matter. This was the only conclusion I could come to in the predicament I'd found myself in. Sitting in an inflatable raft, clutching the bright yellow vinyl for dear life and freezing my ass off as we floated downriver over rapids in the middle of North Cascades National Park was about the last thing I'd ever dreamed I'd be doing in the second week of September. The scenery was gorgeous, sure, with what little attention I could pay to it while I wasn't staring wide-eyed at the next set of jagged rocks and roaring current churning over and between them in our path that I was convinced would suck us under into the frigid water.<p>

"_Spontaneity is the spice of life, Bella_," I muttered, repeating Edward's words from just days ago as I braced myself to not get thrown overboard as we entered another section of rapids. I shrieked as the front of the raft pitched upward and a giant spray of freezing water pelted me.

I was a soaked, shivering mess as we emerged from the last of the rapids in sight. Looking around at the other passengers in our raft, it appeared I wasn't the only one either. Poor Alice's lips were almost purple, and Kate, Edward's cousin, was shaking like a leaf—but they were both sporting grins as wide as the Grand Canyon. Edward, Jasper, and Kate's fiancé, Garrett, all had the same grins on their faces as well. I was pretty sure I was the onlyperson within the three raft convoy that _wasn't_ currently smiling so wide my face might split in half.

"That was awesome!" Kate cheered, joining Alice in a celebratory high five as I tried to keep my teeth from shattering with the force of my shivers. "I can't wait for spring. It's so much more fun when the river swells."

Their excitement seemed to be the general consensus as I looked around, listening to the hooting and hollering voices of the other rafts' passengers reverberate off the forests lining the riverbanks. I didn't want to think about why the river swelling would make the journey we'd just taken more fun, or even contemplate the possibility of experiencing it firsthand by joining them again in the spring. As I closed my eyes and curled further in upon myself in an attempt to preserve what little body heat I had left, I accepted the knowledge that whitewater rafting just wasn't for me.

I didn't feel any movement in the raft—any more than the already present rocking from the current I should say—but a slight increase of warmth suddenly surrounded me in the form of Edward's arms. My chills lessened, but only minimally so as he tucked his head into the crook of my neck from behind.

"You don't seem to be having a good time."

"It's c...co...cold," I stammered through my chattering teeth. "I'm fff...free...zing."

"I can feel that," he chuckled, rubbing my arms vigorously with his hands. "Aside from that are you having fun?"

I shook my head because I wasn't, and I was nothing if not honest. I hated the cold. I hated being wet _and_ cold. I was miserable. If we'd just been floating down a calm river, staying dry and warm, I might have thoroughly enjoyed myself. Under the current circumstances, however, I hadn't. Not at all.

It didn't help that I had to pee either. _Badly_.

"Do you want to hike back to the cars from our campsite in the morning? It's only about five miles. We don't have to finish the float if you don't want to."

My eyes flitted around, taking in all the excited faces surrounding us. I instantly felt remorseful. These were his friends and family, and I didn't feel right putting an end to an activity they all had so obviously enjoyed together in the past. I didn't feel right taking just him away from it either, and I knew he would cut his own trip short in a heartbeat if I just said the words.

"N...no. It's okay. I d...don't want t...t...to go home."

It was the truth, mostly. I really _didn't_ want to go home because then I'd just drive myself insane with deciding whether or not to grace Charlie and Sue with my presence on my birthday. That was the whole reason Edward had dragged me along on this spur of the moment trip to begin with, because I'd been ripping my hair out while trying to come to a decision one way or the other. Well, there was that, and the fact that I'd never gone on a float trip before; had actually never been in a raft before, period. I'd never gone camping either, and Edward had been excited over the prospect of essentially hitting two birds with one stone: camping _and _whitewater rafting.

"Are you sure? We won't miss much. It's pretty smooth sailing from this point out. There's only one more rapid in the last leg of the trip, but this time of year it's really nothing."

I could've turned around and kissed him right there, but I didn't. I merely turned my head and smiled as best I could with my frozen face and nodded, relieved there wouldn't be any more threats of me falling out of the raft into frigid waters and cracking my head open on a jagged rock.

"I'm sure."

We hadn't made it much further downstream before the rafts were paddled toward the bank and tied off. If I hadn't needed to pee so badly, I might've collapsed to my knees and kissed the ground the moment I stepped foot upon solid soil. Instead, I dropped my bag and fished out the travel pack of tissues I'd stowed in there and took off practically running for the cover of a bush, leaving behind a chorus of laughter in my wake.

My sour mood lifted as the late afternoon wore on, and I began truly enjoying myself as we all gathered around the campfire, roasting hot dogs speared with sticks over the open flames. I listened wistfully as they all shared stories from all the camping trips they'd gone on over the years since they were children, and I laughed along with them when their tales would spark a memory of something hilarious that had happened. It was nice feeling like I was a part of their group, even though it was my first, and possibly only, trip with them.

As I speared my third hot dog with a stick, I caught Edward's Aunt Esme smiling in my direction out of the corner of my eye. I looked beside me to Edward and found that he was engaged in a conversation with Alice and Jasper on the other side of him. It was obvious at that point that her smile was aimed at me, so I turned my attention back to her and smiled politely in return.

"Are you having a good time?" she asked.

"I am," I nodded, grinning a bit wider knowing it was the truth.

"I still can't believe you've never been camping before."

I shrugged. "I went camping with my parents once or twice as a kid, but it was nothing like this." I gestured to the surrounding area. "My mother's idea of camping was a lakefront cabin, complete with comfy beds, running water, and at least one electrical outlet that she could plug her curling iron into."

"Yes, definitely not the same," she laughed, shaking her head. "That's a little more my speed nowadays, but I still like to get out here in the open once in a while and rough it with the rest of them."

"Essie, who are you kidding? You haven't roughed it in years!" her husband chortled, turning his attention away from the conversation he'd been having with Garrett beside him. "Your back will feel fine in the morning, but my leg will still be sore from inflating that air mattress of yours taking up half our tent."

"Hey, I told you to get the rechargeable air pump but you're the one that said the foot pump would be lighter to carry."

I laughed at their banter as I pulled my hot dog from the flames to check on it. I bit into the end of it and hummed appreciatively at the slightly charred flavor. I didn't think I'd ever be able to eat a boiled one again after this trip.

Esme scooted closer to me as I took another bite, and I smiled as she speared a dog for herself.

"So Edward told me your birthday is this coming weekend. Do you have any special plans for celebrating it?"

"No," I shook my head, shrugging as I twirled my stick slowly. "My father wants me to join them for dinner, but... I don't know if I will or not."

Edward's hand came to a rest right above my knee and gave a gentle squeeze as I'd spoken. I felt comforted by the gesture, not in that he was signifying that he was paying attention enough to have heard what I'd said even though he was conversing with others, but because, in a way, it felt as though he was telling me it'd be alright; to not worry myself over it. He knew how much turmoil I'd been putting myself through with the simple decision; that was, after all, the whole reason he'd dragged me out on this spontaneous excursion to the middle of the woods. So far, his distraction attempt had worked, too. I hadn't given much thought to the whole birthday debacle until his aunt had brought it up.

"Well..." Esme sighed, clearly unsure what to make of my words. I braced myself for her to question my reasons behind possibly not attending, but the probing question never came. Instead, she simply smiled and waved it off. "I'd hate to think of you sitting home alone on such a special day so if your plans fall through, I'd be delighted to host a gathering to celebrate it with you."

"Thank you, Esme," I said shyly. "But I don't really have many friends, and I wouldn't want you to go out of your way for just me."

"Nonsense, dear," she dismissed my argument easily. "If you don't join your father, you'll join us. And I won't take no for an answer."

What could I say to that? Nothing. There was nothing I could say, so I just smiled and nodded in appreciation. The thought of spending my birthday with Edward's family was enticing, regardless of how little I wished to celebrate the occasion at all.

Later that night as I laid all zipped up in a sleeping bag and stared at our tent ceiling, I couldn't stop thinking about how wrong it was that the thought of spending my birthday with people I'd only just met was so much more appealing than the idea of spending it with my own family. Didn't most normal people look forward to celebrating special occasions with their loved ones? Wasn't that how it was _supposed _to be? Therein lay the problem though. I wasn't normal. My _family _wasn't normal. We were dysfunctional to an abhorred degree, and if I was asked to define the term loved one, my father wouldn't be the first person to come to mind. Not even close.

I sighed and turned to get more comfortable, but froze as my eyes landed on Edward's dark, open ones. There was just enough moonlight filtering in through the mesh vent at the top of our tent for me to make out the features on the upturned side of his face.

"Penny for your thoughts?" His voice was quiet, nearly a whisper as it crossed the small distance between us.

"They're not worth one."

"On the contrary. I happen to believe they're worth a lot more," he answered, his voice louder and tone more gruff as he raised up and propped his head against his fist. "You're only restless when you're thinking of Charlie, so I'll take a stab in the dark and guess you're thinking about Saturday again, aren't you."

It wasn't a question. It didn't need to be; he knew me just as well as I did, possibly even more seeing as how I barely knew myself these days.

I nodded as I released a breath from deep within my chest.

"Just go, Bella. You'll never know for certain if you want to fix things between you, or if your relationship can even be fixed if you don't try. At least this way you find the answers to the questions you've been driving yourself crazy thinking in circles over."

Funny; I'd been thinking nearly the same thing. That's what had been driving me insane. If I didn't at least try, then I'd never know if it was possible for us to get back to where we'd once been, to have what we'd once shared. And then there was always the possibility that later on in life I'd regret not putting that effort forth when I'd had the chance. On the other hand, though, the risk of getting hurt again by him seemed more of a probability than a possibility in the short term, and that's the thought that had kept me from returning Charlie's calls.

"Will you come with me? I don't want to go alone."

He shifted closer to me and reached out to rest his arm over my side.

"Of course I will. You didn't even have to ask." I let out a breath of relief and closed my eyes, feeling almost completely at ease. "Get some sleep, Bella. The sun will be up in just a few short hours."

I slept soundly for those few hours and awoke feeling surprisingly refreshed when a few members of our little adventure group decided to shake the walls of our tent. Edward awoke grumpy, hollering at them to piss off and grow up, which I found all too amusing in my lighthearted mood. It was cute the way he grumbled and shot his arm out from inside his sleeping bag to grab a hold of me when I'd moved to get up. I would've been entirely content to lay there for another hour or so with his face pressed into my shoulder, his light snores nearly lulling me back to sleep as well, but the others had no plans of allowing us to sleep in. With the second shake-n-wake-quake we'd been given, we finally exited the tent to meet the early morning light.

It was chilly and everything was covered in a light sheen of dew, but I was warmed quickly by the steaming cup of fire brewed coffee and the extra clothing layer of Edward's pullover hoodie from the day before. It smelled heavily of smoke from the campfire, but it kept me from shivering as we ate breakfast and cleaned up the campsite.

Floating downriver the second day was an entirely different experience than the first. As we paddled parallel to the winding banks, I began to wonder if it had just been the attitude I'd confronted this activity with that had made it so unenjoyable to me. I'd been skeptical, perhaps even convinced, from the start that whitewater rafting wouldn't be something I'd enjoy. It was too adventurous for my tastes, too dangerous and wild; but was it really? It was almost as if I was becoming two people at once as we made our way further downstream, like a part of me was branching off from who I'd been and laying the foundation for who I'd become in the future.

I was quiet as the others carried on around me, lost in my musings of this duality that was emerging within me. Part of me wondered if it wasn't a facet of some new version of me that I had yet to become or even define, but possibly one of the person I'd been much earlier in life coming back to me—reconnecting some thread of who I'd been before Phoenix with who I'd become while there. The old Bella, the carefree and vibrant teen I'd been, wouldn't have even blinked an eye at the dangers of frigid water and swirling currents churning over jagged rocks. Thinking long and hard over it, I was pretty sure she would've been wearing the same ear to ear grin all the others had after emerging from the rapids the day before; she would've enjoyed it the way they had. But, she's _me_—a very distant and unfamiliar version of me, but she was who I'd been... who I could still be.

It was all so very confusing, but the longer I mulled over these musings, one thing became entirely too obvious to dismiss. The most notable difference between the old and current me was our attitudes. She faced life head on, embraced it and welcomed opportunities despite the possibilities of pits and downfalls and failures that existed. I, on the other hand, hadn't been facing life at all. I merely laid in wait—for what, I wasn't sure. For an opportunity to come along that bore no degree of risk at all? One would never exist. I'd be a fool to think there ever could be.

The only question that remained was this: Which version of me did I want to be?

As we approached the final, and only, rapids of this part of our float trip, the answer came naturally. That morning, it had been decided that we'd hug the bank to avoid the churning section of the river on my behalf. That was no longer what I wanted. I wanted to be _her_; the old me.

"Change of plans," I voiced, smiling sheepishly as the others turned to look at me questioningly. They were all aware of how little I'd enjoyed the rapids just the day before. "Let's follow them."

My heart began beating faster, hammering against my ribs as I paddled as hard as I could with the others to get us back in line. I wanted was to go through the roughest, rockiest, most dangerous part of the rapid possible. I wanted to come out wet and cold and thrumming with life from the adrenaline coursing through my veins while grinning as wide as my face would allow...

And I did just that.

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><p><strong>AN: The lovely Branson101, who I've flipping adored for what feels like years now, graciously started up a thread for this story over on Twilighted. Check it out, hang with some fellow readers, discuss the characters, the story, or possible tricks I may have up my sleeve LOL. If ya feel like commenting on the story, awesome, if not, have a blast making some new friends and goofing off. Branson's the bomb and we've shared many a night laughing our asses off on some of my other story threads in the past. =) See ya 'round the forums! Thanks Branson! 3 U!**

**Here's the link (remove the parentheses): ** http:/www(.)twilighted(.)?f=44&t=17316


	8. Chapter 8

_Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight. We all know who does, and she's fab._

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><p>The morning of my birthday arrived much quicker than I would've liked, but I was bound and determined to face the day with my newfound positive attitude. The frame of mind I'd chosen for this day and what awaited me later on in the evening hours, seemed to be rewarded first thing in the morning. The phone rang just as I was sitting down to eat the french toast with whipped cream cheese and fresh strawberry filling I'd made as a birthday treat to myself. On the other end of the line had been the elderly woman who had taken my application at a small crafts store in Port Angeles.<p>

I'd gotten a job. _Finally. _

Excitement and absolute jubilation surged through my veins as I thanked her repeatedly before hanging up and running out of the house, leaving my delicious breakfast behind. I hadn't even bothered to change out of my ratty pajamas before bolting across the yard to Edward's front door. My finger must have pressed the doorbell a dozen or so times as I jumped around, unable to suppress the energy overflowing out of me. When he opened the door, his sweats and t-shirt rumpled because I'd probably woken him up, I launched myself at him.

"I got a job! I got a job, I got a job, I. Got. A. _Job_!" I chanted, grinning so wide I thought my face might split in half as he caught me.

"Well happy birthday to you!" he laughed as he lowered me back down to the floor. "Congrats, when do you start?"

"Monday morning, at eight," I told him as I grabbed his hand and led him out of his entryway. "C'mon. Come have breakfast with me to celebrate."

As we ate the food I'd reheated in the microwave, I jabbered on about the cute little shop I'd be working at and how excited I was over everything Mrs. Harris explained the job would entail, but I think I lost him right after he'd taken his first bite of french toast. After that, his eyes glazed over and he seemed to be incapable of intelligible speech.

"So Mrs. Harris runs this community program for kids where they get to come in and draw, paint, and make jewelry and stuff on the third Saturday of every month for free. _Free_, can you believe that?"

"Mm."

"I think it's amazing of her to be so selfless like that, and I can't wait to be able to work with them. I used to love being around kids. Some of my friends when I was growing up had younger siblings. I always had a blast playing with them."

"Ungh...Mhm."

"She also hosts art parties for kids sometimes, and provides classes or something like that for adults on Friday evenings after the store closes. She didn't really get much into that when I was talking to her; she just basically said it wasn't something I had to stick around for, but if I wanted to, I could."

"Uh huh... are you gonna eat that?"

I looked at him as he swiped some cream cheese filling off of his plate and licked it off his finger, his eyes trained on my still full plate the entire time. I couldn't do anything but laugh as I pushed it his way and watched him tear into it.

"Did you even hear a word I said?"

"Huh?" His fork stopped midway to his mouth as his eyes darted up to mine. "Hear what?"

I just laughed again as I got up to get a fresh cup of coffee. He might've not been listening, but I was glad to see he was enjoying the food I'd made so greatly.

"I'm sorry. Please forgive me, but this is just..." he trailed off as he stuffed another forkful into his mouth. "_So good_...mmm."

I sat with him as he devoured my entire plate, utterly enthralled by the vigor with which he ate right up until the last bite. That last forkful hung in midair for a series of moments as his eyes traveled across the kitchen counters behind me. His face looked so pitiful as he eyed that last bite before shoveling it in and chewing it slower than he had any other prior to it. I shook my head as a very un-ladylike snort escaped me.

"What?" he asked, a sheepish grin making its way across his face.

"Nothing." I got up to clear the table. "Anytime you want some more of it, just let me know. I'd be happy to make it for you."

"Don't tell me that or you'll never leave this kitchen and I'll turn into Jabba the Hut," he laughed as he joined me at the sink. "So tell me all about the job and this Mrs. Parish woman."

"It's Harris, not Parish," I chortled. "Jeez, did your taste buds take over all of your other senses or something?"

"It's your fault for being such a good cook. I never would've known with all the frozen meals I always see you eating."

It was then and there, with that teasing comment, that I decided my attitude wasn't the only thing that needed changing in my life. After Edward left a short while later, promising to be back by four to accompany me to Charlie and Sue's, I dragged the trash can beside the refrigerator and opened the door. My heart sank just a little as I disposed of all the lactose-free items and frozen dinners, but I needed to do this. I needed to stop living the way I had while I'd been caring for my mother. As Edward had said all too many times, I needed to make my life my own. This was just one step toward doing that.

My second step came just a half an hour later when I stepped out of the shower and began the search for what I'd wear that evening.

Nearly every item in my closet had been a purchase made out of necessity, not of want for it. I'd never had the time to peruse various stores in the mall that held all of the latest fashions, or even to be bothered with keeping up with what was considered fashionable or trendy at any given time. I'd never had the money to splurge on new wardrobe items during those years, either. The consignment shop just down the road from my mother's house had been the best of my limited options.

I couldn't afford to spend thirty dollars on just a single pair of jeans in a mall store back then when I could buy multiple articles of clothing at the consignment shop for the same price. Everything there was secondhand, and I'm sure very outdated, but most of it was in good condition. Every now and again I'd even manage to find something I actually wanted instead of needed. Those finds were the very few times I ever splurged a little to treat myself to something nice.

I glanced over at the clock on my nightstand and pursed my lips. If I hurried I could make it out to Port Angeles, do a little power shopping, and be back and ready by the time Edward returned.

I've always been one to think that the phrase 'shop 'til you drop' was a hyperbole, an exaggeration of massively gross proportions, but I found it to be an expression quite fitting of my exhausted state. By the time I returned from the mall, with bags laden with clothes from at least half a dozen stores, I wanted nothing more than to collapse on my bed and take a solid four hour nap. Quite unfortunately, I didn't have time to do that. I barely made it home with enough time to change and freshen up before Edward was waltzing through my front door and whistling up the stairs for me to shake a leg.

I checked myself one last time in the mirror and took a deep breath before stepping out of my room. I couldn't remember the last time I'd worn a dress outside of my mother's funeral, but this one was nothing like the frock I'd worn that day. This dress was flirty and youthful in it's magenta and black design with a pair of satin roses sewn onto the hemline of the empire waistline. Paired with some killer black heels and the few accessories the sales woman had suggested, dare I say it, I felt _sexy_.

The look on his face as he glanced up when I began my descent down the stairwell was worth every ounce of energy I'd expelled on my whirlwind shopping spree. His mouth was gaping, and he appeared positively entranced.

"You like?" I asked, doing a little twirl at the bottom of the steps to show off my outfit.

"_Holy shit_." I spun around just in time to catch his eyes darting up from where they'd been locked on my ass, or legs. I couldn't tell which, but both possibilities brought a slight flush to my face and smile to my lips.

"I take it you approve?" I smirked.

"Only if I get to burn every piece of clothing you've worn from the day I met you until now."

"Some of your beloved sweatshirts and fleeces would be in that bonfire, too, ya know." His eyes trailed back down to my legs again as I jokingly pushed his shoulder while passing by him to make my way to the coat closet.

"That's okay." I wasn't sure he meant for me to hear him, or if he'd even meant to say it aloud at all with how he'd merely breathed the words, but another light flush warmed my cheeks.

The click of the closet door as I shut it seemed to snap him out of his stupor and he rushed to my side. I smiled as he took the cardigan out of my hands and helped me into it.

"Shall we?" Ever the gentleman, he held his elbow out for me to take and ushered me onto the porch. He even took my keys to lock the door behind us for me. I half wondered if he'd pull a red carpet out of a hat to roll out for me to walk on with how chivalrous he was being, but I'd be entirely dishonest if I said it didn't make me feel good. _Really good_.

Edward always had a knack for making me feel that way, regardless of what I was wearing or how I looked. There was just something in the way he always did things for me that he didn't have to do that made me feel special and cared for. He never made any grand gestures or anything like that to make me feel such a way, it was just in the numerous little things he did routinely. Things like having doors always opened for me, heavy items carried for me, and grueling tasks like gutter cleaning and hedge trimming and such done for me were all things I'd been completely unaccustomed to before he'd come into my life. I didn't expect any of that of him, or even ask it of him, but he did them anyway, and _that's _what always made me feel warmed from the inside out whenever he was around. I wasn't sure I'd ever be able to put into words how thankful I was for this man, but I hoped one day I'd be able to because he deserved to hear them.

The closer we got to La Push, the more my nerves began eating away at me. I didn't know what to expect out of meeting my step siblings for the first time—if they'd like me and I them, or if they'd even recognize me or know a single thing about me from Charlie having spoken of me in passing. I knew next to nothing about them so it wouldn't have been farfetched to assume they knew just as much about me, though it troubled me to think of that as being true.

I'd only heard from him a handful of times in the two years he'd been married to Sue while I'd been in Phoenix, and each of our conversations had been brief. He'd ask how Mom was doing, what I had been up to, and if I needed anything. It was always that last question that brought the call to an end because I'd either start crying for him to come back, or I'd get angry and tell him the only thing I needed from him was the one thing he wasn't willing to give—himself. After the abrupt end of each call, the duration of time that would pass before the next one came would lengthen; a few weeks to a few months, and eventually half of a year would pass before I'd hear from him again.

Sometimes I wonder how long it would've taken him to call the next time had I not called to inform him of my mother's passing. Would a full year have passed? More? Would he have ever called again at all?

Something touched my arm as a sheen of tears blurred my vision, and I jumped, startled by the sudden warmth seeping into my flesh through the cardigan sleeve. I quickly blinked the moisture away and turned my gaze to Edward beside me, my hand pressed to my racing heart.

"Where'd you go?" he murmured, reaching out to push my hair over my shoulder. His hand came to a rest on the back of my neck, and his thumb caressed my cheek. "You zoned out on me and it seemed like you were a million miles away."

"Sorry," I breathed, leaning into his touch. "Just got lost in my thoughts."

"Are you ready for this?" I turned my head and only then realized we'd arrived.

I didn't question how Edward knew where they'd lived when all I'd had was the address Charlie had given me. It was obvious he was more familiar with them than I was from the night we'd met. He'd known them, had socialized with them and lived in proximity to them for two years while I'd been cast aside and hidden from their day to day lives like a deep, dark, scandalous secret.

"Yeah, let's go."

_Positive attitude. Smile, act happy, and hope for the best. _I repeated this like a mantra in my head as Edward ushered me from the truck and up the walkway. I could feel the swells of conflicting emotions brewing within me with each step we took; anger, jealousy, bitter resentment... hope, they all spun together into a churning ball in the pit of my stomach. At the bottom of the steps leading up to the closed in front porch, Edward halted us and turned toward me, dipping his head down so he could speak softly in my ear.

"Any time you want or need to leave, just give me the word, okay?"

I nodded and squeezed his arm lightly as I smiled gratefully at him. It was only a moment later when the porch door opened, and I looked up to see my father waiting to welcome us in.

"Happy birthday, honey."

I couldn't do anything but nod in thanks as he hugged me awkwardly, my arm still wrapped around Edward's and my hand clinging to his bicep. It was almost as if I'd gone into sensory overload the second I'd stepped onto their porch. My mouth had gone bone dry and my stomach knotted as my emotions all battled against one another.

This was a _home_; their _family's_ home. Kids who were able to be just that, kids, lived here, evident by the bicycle, skateboard, roller blades and other sports equipment strewn about the corners of the porch. Charlie must've noticed my wandering gaze taking in the area as he abruptly apologized for the mess and turned to open the front door.

"Seth! Son, I told you to pick up all your stuff out here and put it away this morning. Someone's going to trip and break their neck one of these days!"

"Sorry, Dad! Mom made me clean my room and I forgot!"

Sharp lances of deeply penetrating hurt tore through my chest. I froze in place, unsure if I could really go through with this. That brief exchange had found the rawest of my nerves and rubbed it in a way I hadn't foreseen coming. I'd expected to be angry and even jealous at bearing witness to the bonds they all shared as a family, as that's what I'd always been every time I'd ever had to confront the issue in my mind, but the searing pain of having what I'd once possessed and had ripped away from me played out so seemingly benignly right in front of me... it took me off guard. It literally took my breath away with how intensely it hit me.

How could he play the role of a dad so casually to these kids after abandoning his own child? What had I ever done that was so wrong that he felt the need to turn his back on me in favor of children that didn't belong to him? Had I been a disappointment to him somehow, somewhere along the line? Had I just been unknowingly incapable of fulfilling some deeply ingrained need of his that he managed to fill with his second family?

Charlie walked into the house ahead of us, oblivious to the tear that had raced its way down my face and splattered upon the floor, embedding the tiniest shred of agony I was feeling at that very moment into the hardened, dead grains of wood. I heard Edward sigh beside me and quickly wiped the moist trail off my cheek as I stepped forward, not giving him the chance to either soothe me or give me an opportunity to flee. I felt so weak and emotionally battered and beaten already that the last of my backbone would've turned to dust instantly.

With every step we took further into the house, the hurt I'd been blindsided by grew exponentially. Their walls and shelves were crowded with proud displays of their family; _theirs_, not mine. My eyes feasted upon pictures of Seth and Leah ranging from infancy to current day, family portraits and candid photographs all with smiling faces—and not a single image of a fair skinned girl with brown hair and eyes just like her father. Not one, small, insignificant picture of me to be found in an infinite sea of frames and displays.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry. More than anything, I wanted to run away and never return, but the moment I turned, I couldn't—because there they all stood. The perfect family that I wasn't a part of, depicted in every single picture my eyes had voyeuristically, and heart wrenchingly, fallen upon.

There were no words. If there had been, not a one of us could find them. The air between us was suffocating, at least to me. The sight of them burned itself into my mind; my father's arm around Sue, a boy no older than twelve in front of them with Charlie's hand upon his shoulder, a girl at least six years her brother's senior standing beside her mother with sadness in her eyes that I didn't understand.

Was she upset that I was here? Did she think I'd take her place the way she'd obviously taken mine? Was she worried that I'd destroy the life they'd created together? These were the only assumptions I could form to explain what lingered in her dark eyes.

Charlie cleared his throat, and my eyes broke away from her pained ones.

"I, uh... I know this is long overdue, but kids, this is my daughter Isabella." I didn't know where to look; my gaze flittered between all of them until they locked on my father after he spoke again. "She's the one I've talked so much about over the years."

"Hi." I looked down when I heard Seth's timid voice, and he smiled brightly. "You're much prettier than the picture Dad carries in his wallet."

"Thank you." My voice cracked, my emotions constricting my throat.

I didn't know what to think or do or say when Leah broke away from her family's side and approached me slowly. She came to a stop just inches in front of me and reached out to wrap her arms around me.

"Welcome home, Isabella."

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><p><em>AN: Ouch. Eugh, that was rough. I'll be hanging around the Twi forum tonight. Hope to see some of you there ^_^ Link: http:/www(dot)twilighted(dot)net/forum/viewtopic(dot)php?f=44&t=17316_


	9. Chapter 9

_Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight. We all know who does, and she's fab._

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><p>An hour. That's how long I lasted in the parallel dimension I couldn't make heads or tails of that existed on Ocean Front Drive before nearly begging Edward to hightail me out of there.<p>

Sue had gone overboard with food, either expecting to feed an army, or trying to impress me with her culinary abilities. Aside from presenting the food and urging me repeatedly to eat, she interacted with me very little. Every time I looked at Leah she had that baffling sadness in her eyes that I couldn't decipher the reason for, and only once did she bother to speak to me after welcoming me "home". I was still confused as to whether she meant Forks, or their house. Seth yapped all of our ears off with tales of his numerous fishing trips with my father and all the sports games he'd gone to watch Seth play in while alternatively asking me question after question about my life in Phoenix; What was it like? Did I have a lot of friends, because he did here. Would he have liked it there? Was it really as hot as people say it is in the desert? Did I ever go rock climbing out there, because he really, _really_ wanted to one day. Can you really drink water from cactuses?

And Charlie? Charlie acted as though nothing was amiss; as if I'd been there with them all along and had never been gone a single day. He focused his attention on questioning Leah over how her college classes were going, had she declared a major yet, was she behaving herself and not getting into trouble with the boys. From there he turned to Seth and had a back and forth exchange over him needing to keep his grades up and stay on top of his household chores if he wanted to play hockey in the winter after his football season was over at school. Back and forth between the kids and his wife he went, doling out his attention, praise, and parental bullshit. Very little of the conversation around the table—aside from the interrogation from Seth—was aimed at, or even involved, me.

Wave after wave of alternating anger and anguish rolled within my stomach, souring what few miniscule bites of food I'd managed to swallow. It was difficult to decide which was worse—the all consuming rage, or the gut wrenching pain. Even before the Phoenix debacle, Charlie had never acted as interested in the goings on in my life as he was currently displaying in theirs. Our shared mealtimes back then had lacked just about as much interaction with each other as my sitting at their table, seemingly invisible, did now.

The fact that this aspect of our relationship had remained much the same shouldn't have bothered me, but it did. I felt like no more than a fly on a wall, stuck to a scrap of fly paper and forced to witness what a typical dinner in their day to day life was like; seeing how easily they ignored the glaring truth that a chair that should've been occupied, remained invariably empty.

The plate that Sue had piled a mountain of food upon sat barely touched in front of me while scraping could be heard upon everyone else's. I'd tried to push some of it around to appear as though I'd eaten at least part of it, but it was pointless. I could no more hide the fact that I hadn't taken more than a bite or two than I could force myself to swallow even another forkful.

"Dad? Dad...Dad...Daddy," Seth repeated, over and over and _over_ again, even going as far as to shake his arm to try and get Charlie's attention as he spoke quietly to Leah about something. What they were saying to one another, I hadn't a clue, but every few moments one of them would glance in my direction. Neither of them paid any mind to the chanting child vying for his father's undivided attention.

_His_ because Charlie sure as shit wasn't mine in that moment. I hadn't a clue who I was staring at. He was more of a stranger to me than ever before.

My fork dropped to the table with a clang as it hit the plate. Everything around me stopped—the conversations, the motions of utensils being lifted to mouths, everything—and I didn't care. I didn't give a dust particle of a damn if what I was about to do was seen as rude or immature or even weak. I simply didn't give a shit; I'd had enough. I flashed one empty glance at Charlie and then turned toward Edward, just then noticing that he'd barely touched his food either.

"Can we leave? I want to go. I need to leave."

He was out of his chair before I'd finished the first verse of my request, his napkin tossed atop his plateful of food and chair pushed back so roughly it came close to toppling over. My hand was encased tightly within his as he took his first step away from the table, pulling me behind him. He didn't bother to attempt making a polite excuse, or even pause long enough to nod a silent farewell.

"Bella! Honey, stop. Where are you going?"

I tried not to look behind me, but I couldn't resist the urge as I heard another chair scrape across the floor. The look on Charlie's face—that I only caught a mere glimpse of—nearly stopped me in my tracks, but Edward was stronger than I was. He kept me moving toward the front door by exchanging his hold of my hand for an arm around my back.

"Wait, please! Just stay and talk to me. Tell me what's wrong and I'll fix it."

My body was turned so quickly and pushed behind Edward's towering frame that my head spun dizzily. I had to grab a hold of the sides of his shirt just to keep myself from tripping over my own two tangled feet and careening toward the floor.

"You don't need to hear from her what's wrong. Anyone sitting at that table paying a lick of attention could point out what's blatantly obvious," Edward growled, seething. I sucked in a sharp breath at the feel of his body trembling in rage and looked up to see the back of his neck nearly scarlet.

"I've never, _ever_, in my life been made sick to my stomach from such a display of ignorance. Not until today. You claim you want to be a part of her life? How about you start by showing her she's a part of _yours_.

"C'mon, Bella," he said softly, sorrowfully, to me as he turned. "Let's go."

Edward didn't waste time helping me into my cardigan. Instead, he slipped his jacket over my shoulders and led me out of the house with my sweater draped over his arm. In the cab of the truck he pushed my fumbling hands away from the seatbelt buckle and tugged me across the bench seat so I was tucked into his side.

I'm pretty sure he was expecting another torrent of hysterical tears like he'd held me through on one prior occasion, but only a few silent ones escaped me. I was too numb, too deadened inside from seeing firsthand how easy it was for them to ignore my presence, or lack thereof in years prior, to be able to release that degree of emotion.

"Are you okay?" he asked after parking in my driveway.

I shrugged. Was I okay? Did it matter either way? He sighed and I felt his cheek come to a rest atop my head.

"I can't even imagine what's going through that head of yours right now."

"Nothing. That's what's going on up there," I responded as his free hand came to a rest over one of mine. His fingertips were calloused and rough, but his touch was gentle as he stroked the back of my hand. "My head hurts too much to think anymore."

We eventually made our way inside where I plopped myself down on the couch and vowed to myself I wouldn't budge from that spot for the rest of the night. Minutes passed with the sound of cabinets being opened and closed in the kitchen, water being run, and Edward's footsteps traveling up and down the hallway before he appeared in front of me with a mug of hot tea, a glass of water, and a bottle of Motrin.

He was my savior, tried and true.

"Can I keep you?"

He just laughed as he joined me on the couch, amused by my teasing question, but it got me thinking about something I'd been curious about for a while. It baffled me that some woman hadn't snatched him up in his youth and hid him away from a world of women dreaming of finding a man like him. I'd tried to puzzle out the answer for myself at least a hundred times, but couldn't. I couldn't find a single thing about him that someone _wouldn't_ want.

"Have you always been like this?"

"Been like what, exactly?" he asked, his attention split between me and something he was doing on his cell phone.

"Thoughtful, caring, gentlemanly, protective... I don't know, pick one." He chuckled under his breath, shrugging slightly as he shook his head and placed his phone on the arm of the couch.

"Yes, and no," he answered, turning toward me. I placed my mug of tea down on the coffee table and removed my shoes before stretching my legs out along the cushions between us.

"Okay, explain that, please."

"Caring and protective, yes, I've always been that way." I almost moaned when he pulled my feet into his lap and began rubbing his thumbs up the arches. "Thoughtful and gentlemanly... I wish I could say so, but I can't. I think those are traits that come more with maturity and age than anything else."

"So do you have some kind of major flaw that repels women or something?"

"_What_?" he barked out laughing. "What kind of question is that?"

I shrugged, a cheeky grin playing upon my lips. "I'm just trying to figure out how some woman hasn't swooped you off your feet yet."

"What makes you think one hasn't? Just because I haven't talked about someone special, doesn't mean there isn't one."

I wanted to believe he was joking judging by the smirk upon his face, but it didn't stop every muscle in my body from becoming rigid with tension. Theoretically speaking, it was entirely possible for him to have had a girlfriend the entire time we'd known each other. It wasn't as if I kept track of him by any means, or even questioned his whereabouts whenever he came home late or went out. I never asked because it wasn't my business, and I knew if it was something he wished to share with me, he would've. Logically speaking, however, deep down I _knew _he didn't. He just wasn't the type of person who would spend such an inordinate amount of time with another girl if he had a steady girlfriend. I wanted to believe the same would be true even if he was just seeing someone casually.

"Bella, I'm just kidding. Relax," he chortled, shaking my foot. "There's no mystery woman sitting at home waiting for my call."

"You're an ass." I through an ugly decorative pillow at him, but couldn't keep myself from laughing.

My head truly was pounding; it hurt so bad I could feel it pulse with every beat of my heart. Laughing had only exacerbated it, and I found myself unable to keep my eyes open any longer. I wasn't exactly tired, physically anyway, but I felt drained. The last thing I remembered before being woken by Edward's fingers brushing against my face, was feeling him move and being covered by the afghan that had previously been draped across the back of the couch.

"Bella, wake up."

His fingers skimmed across my cheek and up to my temple where they ran gently through my hair. I hummed, it felt so good.

"You're drooling. It's quite cute."

"Shut up and just keep doing that."

A breathy chuckle was his only response, but his fingers continued running through my hair, occasionally stopping to rub my scalp. I lingered on the brink of consciousness for a while longer, enjoying the tingling feeling he was creating that spread from my head to my toes, before finally prying my eyes open.

Edward was sitting on the floor in front of the couch, his arm stretched back to reach my hair as he watched a TV program on the lowest volume setting possible without it being muted entirely. I suddenly felt horrible for falling asleep as I had; lord only knew how long he'd sat there bored out of his mind.

"I'm sorry," I rasped, my voice thick with sleep as I moved to sit up. "How long was I out?"

"Not long, just a little over an hour." He rose from the floor and stretched, checked something on his phone, and pushed it into his pocket before taking the seat beside me. "How are you feeling?"

"Okay... better than before, at least."

"Good," he smiled, rubbing my knee then patting it softly. "Put those shoes back on and go freshen up, then, because it's still your birthday and we're gonna go celebrate it."

My mouth opened to argue, not really wanting to celebrate anything after the disaster dinner had been, but his fingers quickly covered my lips.

"I'm not asking. It's your day and you deserve to at least have _someone_ make you feel special on it." I sighed, but nodded. The look in his eyes, the sorrow at having been privy to the reality I'd lived in for far too long, made it impossible for me to deny him.

My hair and makeup were a disaster, but miraculously, my dress had somehow managed to remain relatively wrinkle free as I'd slept. With a little help of a curling iron and some industrial strength concealer beneath my eyes to hide the bruised, puffy circles, I was ready to go a little more than twenty minutes later.

Edward was just as gentlemanly as we exited the house as he'd been earlier that afternoon. I didn't inquire as to where we were headed when we pulled out of the driveway; it mattered very little to me. As he navigated our way out onto Highway 101 toward Port Angeles, however, I made a fairly safe assumption that he was bringing me back to the bar and grill where I'd met his friends for the first time.

I'd been right.

Roughly an hour after we'd left my house we were parked in the side lot of the bar. I moved to open my door, but Edward stopped me with a hand on my forearm.

"Wait, I have something I want to give you before we go inside."

I looked at him with a furrowed brow, and he smiled sheepishly.

"I know you said you didn't want any gifts, but I couldn't just _not_ get you something." He reached over and withdrew a tidily wrapped rectangular box from the glove compartment and handed it to me. "Don't get mad."

I snorted at that, shaking my head as I looked at the lightweight box in my hands. My gaze turned to the side to see him anxiously watching me in the glow of a streetlamp above.

"Thank you. You didn't have to."

"I know," he chuckled. "I wanted to, now open it."

I bit my lip as I began peeling the paper away to reveal a nondescript white box. My breath caught in my throat the second I pulled the top away. Inside lay a silver chain link bracelet with one single circular charm dangling beside the clasp. It's design was nothing extravagant, just a plain, silver charm with on word etched into it: _Believe_.

Tears brimmed in my eyes as he reached out to remove the bracelet and affix it to my wrist. It was beautiful; simple and relatively inexpensive, perfect.

"The saleslady showed me a bunch of charm things, but that one held more sentiment than any of the others." I looked up at him as a tear escaped my eyes. He thumbed it away gently. "I know you get down on yourself often because things don't always go as you hope, or come together as quickly as you'd like them to. I wanted you to be able to have something to remind you to keep believing; believe in yourself and your ability to do anything you put your mind to, and to believe that even when things are at their hardest, that everything will work itself out in its time."

"Thank you," I sniffled, throwing my arms around his neck. I'd never been gifted anything before that so much thought had been put into. It meant the world to me, and I highly doubted I'd ever be able to take it off for any length of time.

"You're most welcome."

I couldn't keep the smile off of my face as he made his way around the truck to get my door. It was still there as he led me up the walkway, unable to take my eyes off the beautiful bracelet adorning my left wrist. It was because of that inability to take my eyes off of his gift, that I failed to notice the crowd of people standing inside, waiting for us to walk in. I might never have noticed them had they not all begun to sing at the same time.

My eyes darted up as the beginning words to the happy birthday song sounded, and tears welled in my eyes again as I took in the numerous faces—all smiling and singing along. Friends, Edward's family members, and strangers alike. Even the bartender was singing.

"You guys!" I wailed, somewhere between a sob and a laugh.

The only response I received before I was lost in a sea of warm embraces was a choir of cheers, all hollering out the same thing.

"Happy birthday, Bella!"

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><p><em>AN: Just a little heads up, it's going to be 2-3 weeks before another update arrives. I bought my first home *YAY* and I'm moving next week. After this weekend I'll be out of internet service until the 16th (sucky, I know, but it was the earliest appointment the cable co. had. Bastards) See you all in a few weeks! _


	10. Chapter 10

_AN: I'M NOT DEAD I SWEAR! Sorry for the delay. Moving and getting settled in took a lot longer than I'd anticipated—mostly because I'd somehow convinced myself it'd be a smart idea to pick up a buttload of overtime at the same time. Next time I think I'll try getting INTO the house first before working my ass off to buy nice things for it! Anywho, I'm back and not planning on disappearing again until this story is complete. Enjoy the chapter everyone!_

_Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight. We all know who does, and she's fab._

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><p>September seemed to slip into October in the blink of an eye. I wasn't sure if it was because I spent most of my days working now rather than lounging around the house, or if it was because when I <em>wasn't<em> working I was rarely ever home anymore. Ever since the night of my birthday I'd found myself spending the majority of my time with Edward and his friends, or Edward and his family. Regardless of who else was ever in my company, there was always that one constant—Edward.

On one particular Friday night we'd been at Rosalie and Emmett's house in Port Angeles, spending our evening sitting around a fire pit just drinking and winding down after a chaotic week. Edward's arm had been around my shoulders for the majority of the evening, something which Rose had kept eyeing questioningly. I didn't think anything of it; it was just kind of... _there_. At any rate, the very moment he and Emmett wandered back into the house for fresh beers and some more hot dogs to roast over the fire, she jumped out of her chair and resituated herself in the one beside me that Edward had been in.

"Alright girl, enough of the secrecy. _What_ is going on between you two? Are you guys really just friends, or are you undercover lovers or something?"

My face blazed, and it wasn't from the heat of the fire. As much as I had begun to wish differently, the fact remained that we were only friends. Nothing more.

"Ah... nothing. We're just friends." She'd shot me a look of complete and utter disbelief, to which I'd laughed. "Rose, I swear. There's _nothing_ going on between us. There's no secret hanky panky going on behind closed doors or anything like that."

"So you're not like sneaking into each other's beds at night? Not even for a little cuddle action?" I had to laugh again as I shook my head.

"No. We've only slept together once, on his..." I stopped abruptly as she smirked knowingly. I smacked her leg and scoffed. "Not like _that_. Get your mind out of the gutter, _please_. We fell asleep on his couch once, but it only lasted an hour or two before I couldn't take his snoring anymore."

"I don't get it," she mused after a short silence between us. "He spends all his time with you, talks about you nonstop to anyone who will stick around long enough to listen, and yet, he hasn't put a _single _move on you? I find that hard to believe."

"It's true." I shrugged, forbidding myself to overanalyze her words. I was confused enough about Edward and whether or not he felt even one iota for me of what I had begun to feel for him.

The conversation was quickly brought to a close at the sound of the back door sliding open, and had been left alone since. A week later, all of my thoughts regarding Edward and feelings were pushed to the back of my mind when I came home from work to find Charlie waiting for me on the front porch.

I hadn't tried to get in contact with him after my birthday, but he'd tried to get a hold of me at least half of a dozen times. I'd ignored every message he'd left while I hadn't been home, and screened my calls whenever I did manage to find myself there. I had nothing to say, for once. The few words Edward had given him in parting had said it all, and much more eloquently than I'd have been able to, to boot.

He hadn't intended to stay long, only long enough to tell me how sorry he was for ruining my day and for how uncomfortable the whole thing had probably made me. He had no idea, none. After having weeks to mull over everything that had taken place that night, the true cause of my discomfort had begun to make itself clear.

"They don't know the truth, do they?" My words, whether I wanted them to or not, stopped him from leaving.

"Who?"

"Your family," I answered, looking down at him as he settled himself back into the porch swing. "You never told them the real reason I was in Phoenix for so long, did you?"

"What did you want me to tell them, Bella?" he sighed, throwing his hands up in the air.

"How about the _truth_—that you left me there even after I begged you to let me come home!" I shouted, pushing myself off the rail. "You didn't, did you? Instead, you probably told them I was off having the time of my life down there rock climbing and hiking in the des-"

"She knew she was dying, Bella! That's why she left in the first place," he yelled angrily, making tears spring into my eyes as the wind got knocked out of me. I looked away from him, trying to hold them back. Minutes of tense silence passed between us before he muttered something I couldn't make out. After expelling a deep breath he began speaking in a much softer tone.

"We were in the middle of our divorce when she was first diagnosed. She wanted to protect you, and she thought the best way to do that would be to stay away from you until she got better. She thought she was in the clear at the start of your Junior year, but then she started getting sick again and she knew."

I swiped away at the tear that had slipped down the side of my face before looking back at him. He obviously wasn't aware that my mother had long ago come clean about her reasons for walking out of my life, nor was he aware of the ire he was sparking in me at trying to flaunt her mistake in my face to somehow lessen his own offense.

"She knew long before the doctors did that she didn't have much time left, and the only thing she wanted before she went was to be with you for as long as she could. How was I supposed to take that away from her after everything she'd already suffered alone?"

"Do _not_ pin this on her, Charlie," I spat, seething as I glared at him. How dare he try to use her desperation to right the mistakes she'd made before she died as his excuse. "My mother had _nothing_ to do with you lying to your wife and those kids."

"I never outright lied to them," he sighed, shaking his head. "Sue assumed you chose to stay when I came back, and I let them keep believing that. It was... easier to let them think you just didn't want to come back than it would've been to try to explain the real reason why I never went down there or brought you up here."

"And that was?" I barely managed to ask without rolling my eyes.

Excuses, he was full of them. He seemed to have a never ending supply that he thought would absolve him of any shred of accountability for his actions and choices. It was sickening... and hurtful. If he was even the slightest bit as remorseful as he continuously claimed to be, he could at least respect me enough to give me the honest truth.

"I loved your mother." His eyes turned down after he'd said it, and he appeared to be watching his fidgeting hands as he continued speaking. "I tried for years to make her happy, but I couldn't. She once told me the only good thing that came out of us being together was you. She loved you more than anything in the world, Bella."

He glanced up at me then, and a sad, wistful smile crossed his face momentarily before he looked away again.

"Anyway, I felt guilty just thinking about taking you away from her—and I would have. It was hard enough hearing how miserable you were without jumping on a plane and yanking you away from her. It would've been impossible not to if you'd been right in front of me."

"So instead you just put me out of sight, out of mind, and moved on with your life, ignoring how alone and afraid I was? In what _universe_ is that even remotely justifiable?"

"What do you mean out of sight, out of mind? I thought about you all the time."

I wanted to laugh at his incredulous expression, but I couldn't. It hurt too much to know he truly was oblivious to anything outside of himself—including me. _Especially _me.

"When you go home, take a good look around your house and tell me what's missing, Charlie. There's not _one_ picture of me in there anywhere, and you expect me to believe you thought about me constantly? Edward didn't even know I existed, and he lived next door to you for two years!"

"I couldn't-"

"Save it, Charlie. I don't want to hear another pathetic excuse, and I don't really care to hear how hard anything was for _you_. You had distractions, I didn't. You had people around you to give you comfort when you needed it, I didn't. You had other options, other choices, _I didn't_."

I leveled him with a heated stare, pointing harshly between us as I continued speaking.

"I was stuck with no feasible way out, alone and afraid of not being able to handle the situation I was in. While you were helping with homework, going to sports games, and having family barbeques in the back yard, I was cleaning up vomit and mounds of hair that were falling out of my mother's he..ad."

I tried to swallow down the lump that had risen in my throat so I could finish without my voice hitching again, but it didn't help. The tears welled up and spilled over, and my voice got stuck behind the sob that was preparing to tear through my chest. Charlie stood up instantly to take a step in my direction. My entire frame was trembling as I shook my head violently to stop him from coming any closer. My fingers screamed in protest at how tightly I was gripping the porch rail while I fought to compose myself and keep myself upright at the same time.

As I slowly gained control over my emotions, I shook my head at myself for allowing him to get to me again. I knew better than to think that anything I could ever say would make him understand a goddamn thing about what I went through. I knew better than to think he'd ever be able to offer anything but empty excuses, too, but stupidly, I'd stood there and asked for them.

I took a deep breath and squared my shoulders as I faced him, fearing my voice would come out weak and betray the hurt that was tearing me apart inside, but it didn't. It came out strong and rang with the finality of my words.

"We're done here."

"Bella-"

"No!" I ground out fiercely. "You don't get to stand here and tell me how sorry you are or how hard it was for you. You know _nothing_ of hurt and shame and hardship. I _do_,and you don't have the right to belittle what I've lived through with your bullshit. Now, please leave."

He eyed me heartbrokenly for a minute, but I refused to back down. I was done. I couldn't take any more. He may have realized it, maybe not, but either way, he nodded once and left with a mumbled apology in my direction.

Once inside, I slid to the floor with my back against the door and unleashed the deluge of tears I'd forbidden myself from shedding in his presence. Even now, when he was insistent upon trying to make amends, he continued to hurt me.

Why was it so easy for me to forgive my mother? How could it have been so seemingly effortless for us to mend the rift between us, but yet with Charlie it seemed an impossible feat? Was it because she told me the truth to begin with instead of making excuses? Because it only took one step into her house to see that she hadn't forgotten about me, or even tried to? Was it that her intent had been noble when she'd left, even though her choice had been the wrong one to make? Or could it have been that I felt obligated to ease her conscience by granting her forgiveness so her soul could rest in peace after she passed?

It could have been all of the above, or none at all. I didn't know. I knew on some level I'd harbored more sympathy for her plight because of her illness than I'd found myself capable of dredging up for Charlie thus far, but I didn't want to think about the kind of person it'd make me if that was the only reason I'd been able to forgive my mother. There had to be more to it than just that. There _had_ to be.

That night, Edward came home late from work. At least, I _assumed_ he'd been at work, much like Charlie's stupid wife had _assumed_ I'd chosen to stay in Phoenix and never return. At any rate, he came home late and blinded me with the headlights of his truck when he pulled into his driveway. If I hadn't been sitting on the porch swing, he probably would've gone right inside his own house and went straight to bed, but apparently he took my sitting outside as an open invitation to come shoot the breeze.

And that's how Edward found me drunk off my ass, with an empty bottle of beer slipping from my grasp in its attempt to join its four other empty friends on the floor at my feet.

"Long day?"

I tried to laugh but I started crying and the bottle fell, creating a series of clinks to add to my drunken spluttering.

"I'm a shitty person. Get 'way fr'm me..." I hiccupped and sobbed at the same time. "You might catch it."

He ignored me and sat down on the swing beside me, pulling me into his side.

"What the hell happened today? And why do you think you're a shitty person?"

He smelled _really _good even though he was covered in grime and splatters of paint or something, and for some reason this made me cry even harder. Whatever hope I had of him understanding me, or even me understanding myself, was lost. What came out of my mouth was garbled nonsense as my hands waved around wildly trying to stress the point of... something.

"My father... _unintelligible slurring.._. Lies, all this time lies... _more slurring and sobbed garble_... they don't even know!... _more crying and spluttering..._Why, Edward? _Why?_"

"Bella, honey," he stopped me with a soothing tone before shushing me as he gently restrained my flailing arms. He gathered me tighter in his arms and began rocking the swing slowly. "You need to calm down. I can't understand a word of what you're saying. Just take some deep breaths."

I did as he said and closed my eyes as I pressed my forehead into the curve of his neck. My breathing slowly evened out as I focused on the motion of the swing. It was soothing, kind of. It felt weird, but the sensation was enough to distract me in my drunken state.

"Okay, let's try this again and slower this time. What happened today to make you think you're a shitty person?"

Tears leaked from my eyes as I squeezed them against the pain tearing through my already mangled heart.

"Because I didn't care that she was dying until she was all I had left."

The swaying of the swing abruptly stopped.

"Bella, you _know_ that's not true-"

"It is," I sniffled, pushing myself away from him. "And that's why you should stay away from me. I'm not good enough to be your friend."

Everything seemed to spin around me as I moved to get off the swing, but I only succeeded in stepping on a bottle and sending myself careening toward the porch railing. Edward caught my wrist and pulled me back hard, making my head spin as he caught me and tried to steady me. I felt like I was still swaying even though he was holding me perfectly still, and then I felt it—the churning in my stomach.

"Ed'rd...le'go," I slurred, futilely pushing against him as a rush of saliva flooded my mouth.

Everything seemed to be in slow motion.

I closed my eyes and tried to swallow the mouthful of spit down, but when I did I immediately gagged and felt the world around me spin faster.

Edward cursed.

Waves of nothing but beer and bile raced up and out of my throat.

I opened my eyes when it felt as though it'd passed and found myself bent over the rail... looking at the bush I'd puked on.

I hung my head, too embarrassed to stand and face him.

"Please tell me I didn't get any on you."

"Lil' bit," he chuckled, rubbing circles on my back. "I've gotten it worse before. Feel better?"

"No," I muttered after dry heaving. At least nothing else came up that time.

The taste in my mouth was acrid, so I did what any other already drunk person would do. I pushed myself off the rail and staggered toward my last beer standing in an otherwise empty six-pack.

"Oh, I don't think so, sweetheart. You, my dear, are flagged for the night," Edward said as he grabbed a hold of me and steered me toward the front door instead. "Rule number one of drinking: You puke, you're done."

As embarrassing as this is, he had to help me clean myself up and change into pajamas after all but carrying me up the stairs. Once he'd gotten me settled in the bed with a trash can within reach, he disappeared to run home to shower and change real quick, claiming I shouldn't be left alone in the state I was in. I'd passed out before he'd returned.

It was a good thing neither of us had to work in the morning because it was an incredibly long night. I woke up in what felt like thirty minute intervals, practically falling out of the bed each time as I frantically reached for the trash can. Whether anything came up or not, Edward was right beside me each time, keeping my hair from being coated in grossness and rubbing the sore muscles in my back. Birds were chirping when the last round of dry heaves and nausea finally passed.

"Edward?" I croaked, seeing doubles as he took the glass of water from me and placed it back on the nightstand. I was still drunk and barely lucid, which might account for my following words to him. "Why am I so unloveable?"

I was out cold again before he could reply. At least, I think I was... the feel of his lips brushing against my temple was definitely something that was more likely to happen in my dreams than in my real life.

The words he whispered afterward were, too, because they made no sense at all—and my dreams rarely did.

"_If that were true, I wouldn't be so afraid of you_."


	11. Chapter 11

_A/N: Just a little food for thought and a hint to what Edward's afraid of—What do you remember of your "first love"? Did they break your heart, or are you still with them 'til this day?_

_Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight. We all know who does, and she's fab._

* * *

><p>I awoke early afternoon the following day. My head was throbbing, and my stomach was queasy, but nothing, <em>nothing,<em> could top the mortification that consumed me when the hazy memories of the night before drifted into my sleep addled brain. It was like déjà vu of being fifteen again, getting drunk at a beach party and throwing up in Jacob's lap—only this was worse; _so _much worse.

I was a grown woman now, not some idiotic teenager who did stupid things just because her friends were doing them, too. I should've known when to put the bottle down. Hell, I should've known better than to have picked it up in the first place, but I didn't. I succumbed to the peer pressure of my brain telling me to make everything go away. Now there I was, no further distanced from the same stupid problems I'd had the day before, and to top it off, I'd puked on the object of my growing affections—my neighbor and best friend.

_Fuck. Me. Running._

I could feel his weight in the bed beside me from the way the mattress dipped away from me, not to mention the fact that his hand was _very_ close to being on my ass. I had no idea what to do, or how to act. I hadn't had to face Jake in the light of day, just hours after emptying the contents of my stomach into his lap, years ago. I hadn't had to face him for a solid week afterward because I'd been grounded and forced to take up residence on the couch in the living room so I couldn't hang out with him through our bedroom windows.

I tried to lay as still as possible so as not to wake him. Truth be told, I was afraid to. I could only imagine how juvenile Edward found my behavior the previous night to be, and I feared that between my telling him he should stay away from me and showering him with the case of beer I'd had to drink, he'd see the wisdom in those stupid words I'd drunkenly slurred. I didn't want my last memories of him to be of last night and him saying goodbye this morning.

Just the thought of it had tears burning my eyes, blurring my view of the rain pelting my bedroom window. I sniffled lightly, drying my eyes on my pillow. I didn't think it could be heard over the sounds of the storm churning outside, but the second I did it, Edward's hand on my lower back began to move. His fingers raked against my skin lightly for a moment or two before the bed jostled with his movement.

"Hey," he rasped, his voice hoarse and low. I felt his arm wrap around me and every muscle froze in my body as I buried my face further in the pillow. "Bella, c'mere."

My breath hitched, seizing in my chest when he gently tried to coerce me into rolling over, and I frantically shook my head. Tears leaked out of my eyes from squeezing them tightly shut while I fought down the sob building in my chest.

He returned to rubbing soothing circles on my back, and it calmed me enough to take a few shuddering breaths in.

"I'm sorry," I whispered.

"What for?"

I sniffled, again, and released a deep breath before answering. I didn't roll over, though. It was easier to stare out of the window than it was to look at him.

"Last night."

My eyes had fallen away from the window, focusing on my fingers twisting into the fabric of my pillowcase.

"Bella, roll over."

I closed my eyes, but otherwise remained motionless. A moment later he sighed and hooked his arm around me, effortlessly turning me toward him where I buried my face into his t-shirt, ashamed. Tears began to seep from my eyes again as he started running his fingers through my tangled hair, softly massaging my scalp.

"Why are you upset?"

"I'm embarrassed," I shrugged as I mumbled into his chest. I didn't want to confess my real reason for being so emotional—my fear of him walking away from me.

"So you drank a bit too much. It happens; it's not the end of the world. I'm more worried about some of the things you said, and _why_ you drank so much when you so rarely drink at all."

I nodded, for what reason I hadn't a clue. Maybe just to assure him that I was listening, or maybe as some sort of confirmation that there _had_ been a reason I'd partaken heavily in an activity I typically only imbibed in modestly. _Very_ modestly. In all honesty, my limit was two, but I rarely ever finished the second. I was a lightweight—or a cheap date as Emmett occasionally joked; it didn't take much for me feel the effects of alcohol in my system.

Edward's voice was softer when he spoke again, just above a whisper as his fingertips caressed the back of my neck. It felt amazing and had me curling in closer to him.

"You're not a shitty person, Bella. Even if you didn't forgive your mother right away, it doesn't make you a bad person, and it _certainly _doesn't make you a person unworthy of being my—" His hand stilled on the back of my neck for only a moment before it resumed and he continued his thought. "—of being in my life."

For a split second my brain had begun pondering why he'd amended his originally intended words, but then he was speaking again and I was distracted.

"Forgiveness isn't something that every person can just automatically give. Some people can, but for others, it's something that has to be earned. Maybe in becoming your only companion, your mother earned your forgiveness, or maybe it's just that it took time for you to see how truly sorry she was. That doesn't make you shitty, or coldhearted... if it did, then I'd be a monster."

"What do you mean?" I finally pulled my face away from his shirt to look up at him, only to find a guilty hint of a smile.

"Remember when you asked me if I had a flaw that repelled women?" he asked. I nodded, remembering it clearly. He shrugged then. "I'm a grudge holder—a _bad_ one."

"How bad?"

His lips pursed to the side for a moment, his eyes never leaving mine.

"I don't know why I'm admitting this, but when I was in the tenth grade, the girl I'd been dating for two years kissed my best friend-"

"If you're going to say you broke up with her, that doesn't make you a grudge holder," I snorted, rolling my eyes.

"I didn't. We dated for a few months longer, until she left me because I kept throwing what she did in her face, but it's not even her I was telling you about." He shook his head, guilt marring his features. "I never talked to my best friend again, Bella. We'd been inseparable since we were practically still in diapers, and I never talked to him again after he told me what she did."

"Remind me never to get on your shit list, then."

"I'm not quite as rash now," he chuckled, but it was strained as he resumed running his fingers through my hair. "Point is, though, it takes a lot for me to forgive someone, and even when I do, I never forget."

It was quiet between us for a while as I absorbed his honest words. Could I fault him for being that way—for being so reluctant to give away his trust after it'd been broken by someone? With all I'd been through in my life thus far between my family and people I'd considered lifelong friends—no, I couldn't.

I just hoped I'd never do anything to break his trust in me. But if I ever unintentionally did, I prayed I'd have the strength to withstand whatever backlash he had to give to earn it back from him over time.

"So are you going to tell me what Charlie did, or said, to set you off yesterday?"

_Ugh, so much for evading _that_ topic._

One of the best things of working at Mrs. Harris's craft store was that the hours I spent there were always greeted as a welcomed reprieve from having to think about anything; anything _at all_. It provided enough of a distraction that I didn't drive myself crazy thinking about the past, or my father and his continued calls and apologies, or even about my escalating—and sometimes seemingly unrequited—feelings for Edward.

Our interactions since the morning after my night of drunken debauchery had been platonic at best. That one night he'd spent in my bed had been his last, and since that long afternoon of cuddling, he'd been acting a bit... _off_. Hot and cold, hot and cold; kiss on the forehead one day when he left, a pat on the shoulder the next; sharing a blanket with me on the couch while we watched movies one night, sitting on the loveseat by himself the next.

Being at the shop was definitely a welcomed change from all of the thinking myself in circles and wallowing I'd been doing outside of the place.

As much as I loved my job, though,—and working with Mrs. Harris truly was a pleasure—I couldn't imagine doing it forever. It was fulfilling, yes, but not to the degree that I felt I wouldn't be settling or failing to meet my full potential. It was with this in mind that I'd begun looking into taking classes at the local community college. I couldn't go full time, not with working full time and not wanting to bother taking out student loans until I'd decided what I'd like to earn a degree in. It just didn't make sense to put myself in debt without first having some sort of direction toward a career that would pay off said debt, and the list of possibilities was daunting and _endless._

On a Wednesday night, just an hour after I'd gotten home from work, I'd been in the middle of filling out the paperwork required by the community college's application process when Edward strolled in through the front door. I knew it was him simply because he always knocked the same way before opening the door and letting himself in—two quick raps followed by a single one as he turned the knob.

"Bella?"

"In the kitchen." I put my pen down and went to check on dinner to have something to focus my attention on—_anything_ to keep me from overanalyzing whatever mood he found himself in today.

"You hungry? I made extra."

"As long as it doesn't come out of the microwave, I'm starving."

I snorted and shook my head just as he entered the kitchen. I hadn't eaten a microwave meal since the day I'd emptied my freezer of them all into the trash. He knew this, too, but he continued to tease me about it.

"And what if I make you wait so it cools and you have to reheat it?"

He grinned lopsidedly, throwing an arm around my shoulders.

_A hot day it is, then._

"I'd eat it, you know that."

"How was work?"

"Didn't go to work today, but speaking of it, think there's any chance you can get off the twenty-eighth through the first?" I tilted my head to look at him curiously.

"What for?"

"Just a little getaway," he shrugged. "I was talking to Kate the other day and her sorority is throwing some fundraiser event for Halloween. Since you never went to your high school prom, I figured it would be a great way for you to experience all the glam and glory you missed out on."

Now I was just confused. Never mind the fact that I hadn't even been interested in going to my Senior prom, though I might have had I still been living in Forks with all of my friends, it still didn't make any sense to me what one had anything to do with the other.

"What does a Halloween bash have to do with prom?"

"It's 80's prom themed." He laughed and pulled a boxed corsage out from behind his back. "So whaddaya say? Will you be my date?"

"I'd love to," I snickered. "I guess that's one thing more thing I can cross off my list of things I never got to experience."

"Speaking of that, what do you think of maybe going to a concert while we're up there? Hit two birds with one stone again kind of thing... that smells fucking _phenomenal_ by the way."

This man was just too much sometimes.

In the weeks that followed, Rosalie, Alice, and I searched high and low for dresses that would suit the occasion. We checked stores in the mall, and bridal shops, but while we found some really gaudy garbs, we didn't find anything that screamed 80's era. The guys had it so damn easy. All they had to do was go to a tux shop, grab the ugliest ruffled shirt they could find, and pair it with a hideously colored suit. Emmett chose some powder blue monstrosity that had me laughing so hard I nearly wet myself when he modeled it for us, complete with shiny white dress shoes. Jasper's outfit was a bit more reserved in the burgundy color he'd chosen—just a bit, though.

Edward, however, wouldn't show us what he'd bought no matter how much we'd pestered him, but he did ask me to tell him what color my dress was once I found one. I thought it to be an odd request, but agreed to it nonetheless.

It was a few days later when I'd wandered into a consignment shop, figuring it was at least worth a shot, and I hit the jackpot. Crammed onto a rack in the very back of the store were gowns with puffy shoulders in ostentatious colors too numerous to count. The girls met me up there and we laughed hours upon hours away while trying on each and every garment until we left with our ensembles, replete with ridiculous accessories and matching shoes.

On the evening of the twenty-seventh, Edward and I packed up his truck and made the three and a half hour journey up to Seattle. For the sake of ease we'd decided to book a room at the Sheraton Hotel where the bash was to be held. From what I had gathered, the funds raised would be contributed to a university related program that provided scholarships and educational grants to its students. Kate was part of the foundation's student selection committee, but that was about as much of the details of the event as I'd absorbed during our few short phone conversations. It was for a good cause, and I was more than happy to pay the fifty dollar ticket price—not that Edward had allowed me to. He hadn't allowed me to pay for my own room when it turned out that they'd overbooked their double occupancy rooms, either. Stubborn ass.

I'm not quite sure what had sparked Edward into turning our little getaway into a first experience extravaganza, but that's exactly what he did. It seemed as though if there was something within a reasonable driving distance that I'd never experienced, he made it his mission to ensure that I didn't go home without doing it. We explored Pike's Place Market, went on a dinner cruise in the Puget Sound, ate at the Space Needle restaurant, ventured through an art museum or two, and even caught a musical at a local theatre—these were my favorites of the tourist attractions we visited.

Friday night our friends joined us in the city for the Rascal Flatts concert Edward had bought us tickets to. I'd become so familiar with the band since I'd met him that I'd been able to sing along with the majority of the songs—mostly his favorites because he listened to them so often. I'd had an absolute blast, but the more time we spent together, away from Forks and away from all the things that frequently allowed me to distract part of my attention away from him, the clearer it became that what I felt for Edward was far more than just a schoolgirl crush.

With each smile he sent my way, each laugh that burst forth from his chest, and each affectionate, yet platonic, physical interaction between us, I fell for him a little bit more. It scared me to realize how deep my feelings for him ran because I wasn't sure if he felt any of it in return for me. Rosalie was insistent he did, but I had absolute _zero_ experience in the love department to work with in forming my own opinion on the matter. I didn't know what to think about how he felt; I only knew that I was approaching head over heels status at lightning speed, and the possibility of falling flat on my face was decidedly considerable.

"Girl, I'm _telling _you, just make a move on him. He wouldn't spend all of his time with you if he just thought of you as a friend and nothing more. Trust me on this one. I speak from experience here."

"Ow!" I yelped, my hand flying to my hair that Rose was currently teasing to gravity defying heights.

"Sorry. If it makes you feel any better I burnt my ear with my curling iron." It didn't, but it was kind of funny. The spot on my scalp where she'd just nearly torn a chunk of my hair out still smarted. "Anyway, if you ask me, he'd be a fool if he didn't have feelings for you, 'cause you're kind of awesome."

"Aww, thanks, but seriously, I think I'm being an idiot for even entertaining the idea. I'm too young for him."

Her hands fell to her sides as she stared at my reflection in the bathroom mirror.

"What the hell does age have to do with it? It's not like you're a minor. You're an adult, and he'san adult... well, most of the time anyways. So what does it matter?"

I shrugged. I didn't really have a response for that other than stating the obvious.

"He's eight years older than me, Rose. _Eight_. He'd graduated high school when I was in the fifth grade. That's kind of... disturbing, don't ya think?"

"Ew!" her face scrunched up as she pushed my shoulder. I laughed. "Don't think about it _that_ way."

"It's true, though. I've thought about it a lot—not in the pedophile-ish way, but still—our age difference is something I've put a lot of thought into," I admitted. "He's probably ready to settle down, start a family and all that, and he'd be best matched with someone who was at the same point in their life. I'm still floundering trying to _find_ my chickens to get them in order or whatever."

"You make the weirdest analogies sometimes, ya know that? And it's geese in a row, by the way. Or ducks."

"Yeah, yeah. Leave my chickens be. The point is, my life's a mess and probably will be for a long while. That's not what he needs, and most likely not what he's looking for."

She sighed as she put the finishing touch of a hideous, green, polyester flower clip on the side of my hair and turned to sit on the edge of the sink. It was hard not to feel disappointed by the truth of the matter, but it didn't make it any worse to have said it aloud. It was what it was.

"Bella, Bella, Bella," she shook her head, reaching forward to tap the center of my forehead with her finger. "You're over thinking things. Sometimes the heart just wants what the heart wants."

"And if his heart wanted me, don't you think he would've taken advantage of the whole only single rooms available thing this weekend? It's not like it would've been all that much different from us sharing a tent, or sleeping in the same bed together like we did a few weeks ago... granted I spent most of that night puking my guts out."

"Ha! I _knew _his ass was lying when he said he spent the night on your couch because you were sick. And yes, it _is_ different. He's a man, Bella. He might be able to keep his hands to himself for a single night, but he's not a saint. Four nights in a row of spooning you would be more than the poor guy's gentlemanly restraint could take."

She hopped off the sink counter then, and turned to walk out of the bathroom, letting her words trail behind her.

"Now come help me stuff myself into this fugly ass dress."

At seven on the dot there was a knock on my hotel room door. I'd gone back to my own room to finish getting ready after my talk with Rose, and while I was no less skeptical of the possibility of Edward feeling something for me in return, I _was_ a little more hopeful. Just a smidge. That hope, however, swelled to almost desperate proportions the moment I opened the door to find him standing there.

He looked _incredible. _

I'd never seen him dressed up. Even the night of my birthday he'd gone casual with a pair of jeans and an un-tucked dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up. For tonight he hadn't gone for the frilly tuxedo shirt, as the others had, but instead chose a plain white dress shirt paired with a matching bow and cummerbund in hunter green—the same color as my dress. The white blazer and black dress pants to go with it brought the whole ensemble together perfectly.

"Wow."

He smirked. My face burned. I hadn't meant to say that aloud, but yeah, _wow_.

"Wow right back," he grinned, stepping forward to slip a corsage on my wrist. "You're an absolute vision in green."

"I feel like a tree." Could my brain _possibly _form anything more deranged? I sincerely hoped not. If my face could get any hotter, I'd spontaneously combust; I was sure of it.

"Well you certainly don't look like one," he laughed, holding his elbow out for me to take. "The prom awaits, m'dear."

If there's one good thing to be said about sateen arm gloves, it would be that they eliminate the embarrassment of sweaty palm syndrome. I'd know; mine felt as though all perspiration from everywhere else in my body had been rerouted to my hands. It was hard to say whether it was my nerves, or because of the gloves themselves, but I didn't dare remove them.

Walking through the doors into the room where Gloria Estefan was flowing through the speakers, felt a little like walking into the prom scene from 'Footloose'—only because there were balloons, streamers, and glittered confetti _everywhere_. Couples entering stopped to pose beneath a balloon arch to have their picture taken for a five dollar donation, and, of course, that's where Edward led us first. Between the eight of us—Rosalie, Emmett, Alice, Jasper, Kate, Garrett, Edward and myself—we must have shelled out at least a hundred dollars or so for all the pictures we took. The girls and I bought a copy each of the girls and guys only shots, and the group shot, as well as our own couple shots.

The tables set up in the hall seated eight, which was perfect for our group. We weren't split up, and we didn't have to share a table with people we didn't know, either. The only unfortunate thing about our seating arrangement was that Rosalie had chosen to park herself within kicking distance of my legs, and she took advantage of this frequently. Every time I'd glare at her, she'd give me the wide eyed look that said '_Do it. Make a move already.'_ What'd she expect me to do, mount him right there in a roomful of people or something? I could almost hear my knees sigh in relief when Edward stood from the table and asked me to dance.

Throughout the evening we danced, ate, drank the spiked punch, and laughed. We acted silly and tried to show off our best—or worst depending on how you looked at it—dance moves. Being that I'd been born in the late eighties, unlike most of my immediate company, I wasn't as familiar with popular dance moves from that era. The best I could do was the 'Roger Rabbit' and the 'Running Man', but at least I pulled them off better than Edward's rendition of the 'Can-opener'. Seriously, the man can't dance, but it was fun watching him try.

Rosalie's persistence continued throughout the night relentlessly. After a lot of liquid courage, the idea of making a move on Edward became more and more appealing. The appeal factor might have been intensified by how good and _right_ it felt to be in his arms, swaying slowly on the dance floor. Then there was the way he looked at me with such warm eyes and soft smiles, and the way his fingers would caress my back every now and again so tenderly.

Somewhere between what I felt for him, Rose's urgings, the alcohol in my system, and the way he was looking at me and touching me, I grew a pair.

"You know," I began hesitantly, nervously. "I think I've experienced more firsts in these last few days than the last few years combined. Thank you for that."

"You're welcome," he smiled, turning us on the floor. "I was happy to be able to share them with you."

"There's, uh..." my face began to heat just thinking about the words I hadn't yet spoken. "There's still something I've never... you know, with anyone... I mean..."

"Bella, what is it?" he asked, his expression turning to one of concern as our movements came to a slow halt.

I couldn't dredge up the courage to put what I wanted into words, so instead, I just went for it. My heart took off racing as I raised up onto the tips of my toes and pressed my lips to his. They were so soft and warm and sweet... and then they were gone.

I felt his hands on my face, but refused to open my eyes as my heart lurched and sank to my stomach.

"God, Bella, no. Don't ask me to be your first for that. Please, I'm begging you."

My heart gave another painful lurch as I took a step back from him, covering my lips with my fingers as his hands fell away from my face. They came to a rest on my shoulders, burning them with his heat and making me take a step further away from him as tears filled my eyes.

"I'm sorry... I'm s'orry," my voice cracked, my throat constricted by my tears and the maelstrom of emotions crippling my ability to breathe.

"Bella, no. _I'm_ sorry," he responded, agony marring his features. I held up my hand and shook my head, trying to be strong.

"It's okay, I get it. I'm not..."

I wasn't what? His type? Good enough? What he needs?

It didn't matter.

"I have to go."

I had to leave. I couldn't... I just had to get away from him. His rejection hurt worse than I'd been able to conceive it ever could. I thought I'd been prepared for it, but I wasn't.

I couldn't bring myself to look behind me as I ran off the dance floor and toward the exit as quickly as my watery vision would allow. I didn't know if he was following or not, but I couldn't face him again—not in the state I was in—so I did the only thing I could think of. I slipped into the nearest stairwell and ran up as many stairs as possible until my chest felt like it was being ripped open by the sob that tore through my throat.

Edward was nowhere to be seen when I slipped into my room. I shut and latched my door as quietly as I could, not knowing if he had made it back to his own room next door yet or not, but not wanting to alert him to my return if he had. I'd never been so thankful for a lack of availability in double occupancy rooms in my life than I was that night, or that he'd refused sharing a single. I wouldn't have been able to share a room with him after how I'd foolishly just thrown myself at him, believing for even a second that I could have ever been someone he'd want as anything more than a friend. I didn't want him to witness my heartbreak, but more than that, I didn't want to make him feel worse than he evidently already did.

As I collapsed in my bed I told myself I'd just give myself a few days after we returned to Forks to get over the rejection, and my feelings for him, and then we could go on being friends as though nothing had happened. I prayed to God I'd be able to manage it, because I couldn't imagine my life without him in it in whatever capacity I could have him.

With each fresh tear that fell against my pillow, though, my doubts that I'd be strong enough to do just that doubled.

I hadn't been in my room long, at least I didn't think I had, when I heard what sounded like someone pacing up and down the hall in front of my door. I froze, praying to everything holy under the sun that if it was who I thought it was, he'd give me at least the remainder of the night without having to face him.

He didn't. He knocked; more than once.

"Bella, please open the door."

I could deny him nothing, no matter how much my heart and brain screamed at me to bury myself beneath the blankets and never emerge. I slid from the bed and wiped my face with the neck of my tank top, praying my eyes could stay dry until I was able to shut the door again. It was a futile attempt; the second I opened the door and peeked through the opening the chain allowed, the tears came forth and spilled over again.

_Stupid prayers... don't know why I even bother. They never work._

"What, Edward? I'm tired." I ducked my head behind the door to fist away the moisture as I spoke. I hatedthe fact that he _tsk-_ed his teeth and sighed the second he saw me. I hated that he looked just as distraught as I was even more.

His soft spoken voice was heartbreakingly sad when I heard him again.

"Open the door, Bella. Let me in, please."

I closed the door and undid the chain, but opened the door no more than it had been before. It didn't matter, he pushed it open gently and stepped inside. I hadn't even had the chance to turn away before my face was in his hands and his lips were ghosting kisses over every inch of it except my lips; not once on the lips as he spoke.

"I'm sorry... I'm sorry... please, I'm so god awfully sorry." He pulled back, his thumbs caressing my cheeks as he gazed into my eyes intently. "I need you to listen and really _hear _what I say to you, okay?"

I nodded, the movement forcing another set of tears to stream down my face.

"I've fought this as hard as I could—told myself a million and one times that it was better to stand by, watching and waiting, no matter how much it hurt me to do so, than it would be to be your first love that you only thought about once in a blue moon years from now."

His thumbs stroked my cheeks as I looked up at him and saw the sheen of his own unshed tears glistening in his eyes.

"I'd rather be your _last_ than just a part of your memories."

A strangled sob hitched its way out of me as he placed a few more kisses upon my face.

"You're young, baby. You're young and inexperienced, and that's not a bad thing, but it's enough to terrify me of losing you one day because you look back and wish you'd dated more people-"

"I-" His thumb rubbed over my bottom lip, effectively quieting me as his eyes danced across my face.

"Is this—being with me—what you really want?"

I nodded, tentatively kissing his thumb as it passed over my lip once more. I wanted it, _him_, more than anything in the world.

"Are you sure? Because I don't want to be your first, Bella. I don't want to be your first unless I can be your _only_. Do you understand?"

I nodded again, fisting the sides of his shirt in my hands.

"I want you, Edward, no one else."

I was unsure of where that left us because all he did was continue to stare at me with conflicted eyes, but then, he ducked his head and his warm lips brushed against mine tentatively. A faint whimper left my lips when he pulled back slightly and his eyes opened, looking directly into mine as our mouths remained just a hairsbreadth apart. I could feel each and every unsteady breath he released as it washed over me. I was lost in his eyes, captivated by the beseeching look in them.

"Don't hurt me."

His eyes closed as soon as his breathed words were spoken, and in the next moment his lips were on mine; loving, demanding, pleading, giving, taking, taking, taking.

There were still so many unknowns where my future was concerned—who I'd build myself up to be, what I'd do with my life, whether or not the people who were legally considered to be my family would become just that, my family, or if they wouldn't be part of my life at all. All of these things I had yet to discover, but I knew one thing for certain in that moment.

I knew who I'd be with at the end of the day I found the answers to every unknown that still lingered. I knew that at the end of every journey down a beaten down, bumpy road, the person I'd be standing next to would be Edward.

I knew this without question because I knew I'd never do the one thing he asked me not to; I'd never hurt him.

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><p><em>AN: Do you think Edward has reason to be afraid of being hurt? Do you think he should have continued to sit idly by until she'd "sowed her wild oats"? I'm interested to hear your thoughts. Come chat with me on the forum ^_^_

__**http:/tinyurl . com/4249fts **(Just remove the spaces before & after the . )__


	12. Chapter 12

_Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight. We all know who does, and she's fab._

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><p>November came and went, as did most of December. I kept myself busy between work, spending time with Edward and our friends, and readying myself to start college after the New Year.<p>

I didn't return any of Charlie's calls. Not one.

I tried to not even think of him, but that proved to be hard while living in his house. I spent as little time there as possible; so little time, in fact, that I began wondering why I even continued to live there at all. Most nights I spent at Edward's, and the few that I didn't, he spent at mine.

We'd slept together, but hadn't, you know, _slept_ together yet, much to my frustrated disappointment. Edward was nothing if not a perfect gentleman in, and out, of our bedrooms. He wanted to take things slow, claimed there was no need to rush—which, honestly, drove me batshit crazy, but I understood his reasoning... for the most part.

Before him, the only real kiss I'd ever experienced was nothing more than a chaste peck that lasted all of a few seconds. I was inexperienced to an embarrassing degree when it came to any type of sexual or romantic intimacy, which led to Edward being overly concerned with the pace of our physical relationship. He didn't want me to feel as though he expected anything of me or feel pressured to do anything I wasn't ready for. I'd scoffed at him when he'd said that to me, because, truly, I knew he wasn't _that_ type of guy. But what he said after my sound of incredulity, while caressing my temples with his fingertips as he hovered over me, nearly turned me into a sobbing mess.

_"You're worth the wait, Bella. I need _you_ to believe that you're worth it, too. I'm here. I'm yours. I'm not going anywhere."_

We'd talked a lot that night—about us, about me and my lingering issues with abandonment and how afraid he was of me making rash decisions because of my fear of losing him. I think in some ways, his hesitance was justified.

I wanted so badly to be his equal in every way. I wanted to have a stable career and goals for the future. I wanted to be at the point he was in his life where he was ready to settle down and start planning on having a family. I wanted to be level headed and emotionally stable enough to be able to really share a life with him instead of feeling as though I was always slowing him down or holding him back.

But I wasn't.

I wasn't any of those things, and because of that, there were times I _did_ fear I'd lose him because I felt like I was always scrambling to try and catch up to him, to where he was in his life. There were days I couldn't fathom what he could possibly see in me to begin with, and _that_ was exactly the reason he was afraid to move too fast. He didn't want me to ever doubt that he had more reasons to stay than he'd ever have to leave.

It broke my heart that he felt the need to prove these things to me, to make me see myself the way he did—as a person of worth—just because of the damage others had inflicted upon me in the past. My lack of self worth was a real problem, and one that I couldn't avoid or ignore any longer because it didn't just hurt me, it hurt Edward, too. It pained him to know that I couldn't see myself through his eyes, and as much as I know he wished he could fix that, he couldn't. Not on his own.

This was something I needed to remedy within myself, which was why I began seeing a therapist toward the end of November.

Carmen, my therapist, is... well, she's a godsend. I was apprehensive at first, not entirely comfortable with the idea of bearing what I felt were the darkest parts of me to a complete and utter stranger, but she's really helped me put a lot of things into perspective in just a few short weeks. She's really good at honing in on the sources of my many insecurities and bringing them to the surface to help me analyze them and see them in a different light.

It's no surprise that the majority of our conversations revolve around my parents—mostly my father. She's helped me see that while my anger toward Charlie is justified and understandable, it also keeps me from getting over the pain he caused. Carmen rationalized it as having an open wound in which my anger keeps it infected and incapable of healing. She then explained that sometimes giving forgiveness is more beneficial to ourselves than to those who've wronged us. It's simply a way of closing a metaphorical door on the pain they've caused us so that we can move on, with or without the person we've forgiven.

It gave me a lot to think about, and more than I truthfully cared to. But I did... think about it, I mean. I thought about it a lot actually, including this very moment as I sat at my kitchen table, trying to read the morning paper but finding myself too distracted by those very thoughts.

"Shit... I forgot to buy more orange juice," Edward's groggy voice muttered.

I looked up from my paper just in time to see him scratch his ass as he stood from his hunched over stance in front of the fridge. The sight gave me a momentary reprieve from my chaotic mind and made me chuckle. He was so damn cute in the morning when he first woke up, his hair all disheveled and clothes rumpled as he shuffled through the house in a drowsy stupor.

"You forgot cream cheese, too, which means no stuffed french toast for breakfast this morning," I snickered, laughing a little harder when he pouted and slumped into a chair.

Poor man, he looked so distraught at the thought of not having his favorite Saturday morning feast. I stood from my seat and wrapped my arms around his neck while pressing a kiss to his pouting lips.

"You want me to run to the store?"

He nodded, trying to fight against the smile tugging the corners of his lips upward. I kissed him once more as I chuckled. So damn adorable when he wanted to be.

"Go shower, I'll be back in twenty tops."

I tried to step away, but he pulled me into his lap and wrapped his arms around me, nuzzling his face into the crook of my neck.

"You're too good to me." He kissed the side of my neck and smiled when he pulled back to look at me, cupping my cheek in his palm. "I love you."

"I love you, too."

It had been snowing on and off for a few days, turning everything in eyesight to a land of white... and dingy gray on the roads. It'd been years since I'd seen real snow. We rarely, if ever, even saw flurries in the winter in Phoenix. I'd forgotten how beautiful it looked, magical even, in the way it made the landscape glisten in the sunlight.

I'd made a quick run through the market, grabbing a few extra items more than just the orange juice and cream cheese Edward had forgotten, before dashing toward the checkout lines. It was just a few days before Christmas, and the place was a madhouse. I just wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible. I jumped on the shortest line in sight and began digging through my purse for my wallet.

"Bella?"

My head snapped up at the unfamiliar voice calling my name, and I froze. Standing in front of me, with a cartful of her own purchases, was Leah.

"H..hi," I stammered, taken off guard. I didn't know what else to say so I just stood there like an idiot, hand still shoved inside my purse.

"It's good to see you," she smiled, a hint of that damn sadness flickering to light in her eyes again for some unknown reason. "How have you been?"

"Good. I've been good... you?"

They really need to make a manual for these kinds of situations just for me because I'm completely inept at knowing how to deal with them. They could title it _Awkward Coincidental Encounters For Dummies 101_ or something.

I tried to mask my discomfort by going back to fishing for my wallet.

"I've been okay, been busy with school and all," she replied, placing the last of her items on the conveyor belt.

I nodded, smiling politely while hoping her statement would mark the end of our strained conversation.

It didn't.

She turned toward me after placing the separating bar on the belt and reached into my cart to pick up the jug of juice.

"I, um..." she trailed off, placing the juice on the belt. She sighed as she tapped her fingers against the metal frame, and then brought her eyes up to meet mine.

"I wanted to come talk to you after how things went down on your birthday, but Da... sorry," she stopped herself, looking sincerely apologetic, "Charlie thought it'd be best to give you some time."

She looked nervous, her fingers resuming their tapping. I instantly felt bad that she felt that way just because of who she was talking to. She hadn't done anything wrong to fear my wrath or warrant my disdain.

"If you have the time, could I maybe buy you a cup of coffee? There's a place right down the road. I won't take up but a few minutes of your time, promise."

I deflated. Whatever misguided notions I'd had about this girl from that inexplicable sadness in her eyes was clearly false. At least, I was pretty sure they'd been false. She didn't seem to be afraid of my taking her place as I felt she had mine. Leah just seemed sincerely _hurt_ by something. Maybe that was what she wished to talk to me about, maybe not, but looking at that sadness in her eyes, I couldn't deny her.

"Okay."

I paid for my few groceries and followed her out of the store and then to the coffee shop just down the street. With our coffees in hand, I trailed behind her to a table in the far corner. I sat silently, waiting for her to say what she felt she needed to, but she just looked at me sadly for what felt like an eternity before she finally spoke.

"Charlie was wrong, Bella," she said, shaking her head just once. She reached into her bag and pulled out a weathered envelope and passed it across the table. "I found this the night before-"

"Did you read it?" I asked, cutting her off as I narrowed my eyes at the familiar scrawl and return address. It was a letter I'd written to Charlie years ago while sitting in the hospital's ICU for the first time, _alone_. Suffice it to say, I hadn't had much of anything nice or flattering to say.

"I swear, I didn't mean to pry." My eyes flashed up to hers and she squirmed slightly in her seat. "My mom asked Seth and I to clean out the garage, and I found it in one of the workbench drawers. I didn't know what it was and I didn't want to throw it away if it was important... so I opened it."

I nodded stiffly, my finger tapping against the crinkled corner of the envelope.

"What he did to you was wrong, and I'm sorry for what you went through. I don't want anything I say to take away from that."

"Thank you," I whispered, feeling a prickle of tears well in my eyes. This girl's sadness was _for_ me, not for fear of what I could take from her.

She looked back at me with those soulful, deeply pained eyes.

"I want you to know that how things were the night of your birthday... they're not usually like that. I'd confronted him with the letter the night I found it, and I think I'm partly to blame for the way he'd acted. Charlie just... he wanted so badly to show you that he's not _that _person anymore," she said, glancing down at the envelope between us.

"I knew he was going the wrong way about showing you that he's changed, and I kept trying to tell that to him that night, but... you left before he could do anything about it."

I nodded with a half shrug, unapologetic for leaving as I had. She paused, turning her cup of coffee between her hands while I looked out of the window beside us, seemingly waiting for me to say something. I didn't have anything to say, however. I'd grown tired of hearing Charlie's excuses, and hearing someone else make them for him on his behalf was no better.

"He's not a bad man, Bella. He may not have always been the best dad in the world, but he tries to be. If you'd just give him a chance to-"

"With all due respect, Leah," I interrupted with a slight snip that shouldn't have been aimed at her. "The man you know and think of as a father isn't the person I see when I look at him. I _can't_ see him the way you and your brother do, and honestly, I doubt I'll ever be able to again after what he did."

"I know," she sighed dismally with a slight nod. "He knows it, too. I wish I could change that for both of you, but I can't."

"Why do you care?" I asked her curiously. "Why does it bother you so much?"

"Because it just _does_. I lost my father when I was eight. Seth doesn't even remember him because he was only two when our dad died," she replied, visceral anguish clouding her midnight eyes. "I know _exactly_ what it feels like to lose a parent you love. I can't imagine what it'd feel like to lose both. You lost your mom, and I'm sorry for that—truly, I am, but you still have your dad.

"You don't have to lose them both, Bella. Charlie's made horrible, _horrible_ mistakes, and I get that he hurt you, but he's still here, and he wants to be a part of your life. We all do."

Her words continued to resound through my mind as I made my way back home a short while later. I understood her point, but I didn't see things the same way she did. Of course it would devastate her to lose her mother after having already grieved the loss of her biological father. Sue had never hurt Leah the way Charlie had me. Their familial bonds weren't severed the way ours were. If things had been different between us, I wouldn't have been able to imagine losing my father as well, either, but nothing could change what had already been done.

Leah's words, meant to persuade me into giving Charlie a chance, only left me standing at a crossroad. The answer to one simple question would dictate which path I chose: Would walking away hurt me more, or heal me?

I didn't know.

That night, as I lay in bed with my head on Edward's chest and his fingers running through my hair and down my back, I tried to puzzle that answer out.

"Edward?"

"Hm?"

I twisted just enough to be able to look up at his face. My fingertips stroked lightly against the bare skin of his chest as I spoke.

"Do you think there's even a possibility Charlie and I could ever have a real relationship again?"

"It's not _impossible_, but it depends," he answered after a moment of thought.

"On what?"

"On whether or not that's what you really want, baby." He pressed a kiss to my forehead.

"What if I do, but I don't want to give him the power to hurt me again?"

"It doesn't work that way, Bella," he chuckled lightly, shaking his head. "Any time you allow someone a place in your life, you give them the ability to hurt you. It's a risk we all take in hopes that the people we choose won't abuse that power."

"Ugh, why can't I just stick to saying I'm done with it and walk away?"

He rolled us so that he was hovering slightly above me, his mossy gaze looking deeply into my eyes.

"What's bringing all of this on tonight?"

"I ran into Leah earlier, and we... talked."

"About?"

"Quantum physics. What do you think we talked about, Edward?" I snorted. "_Charlie_. What else?"

"You can be such a sassy little thing sometimes," he sniggered, pecking my chin. His head lifted and he just looked at me for a while, his eyes tracing my features.

"What do you want, Bella? Do you want him in your life? Do you want to have with him what Leah and Seth do? Because if you do and you walk away, you'd only be hurting yourself, sweetheart."

"But if I stay and let him in, he could hurt me again. Either way I'd end up hurt again."

"He could," Edward agreed. "But that's a risk you'd have to take if you want him in your life. You can't want things to be fixed between you, but not open yourself up to him to try and do so. If you do that, you're dooming the attempt to fail from the start, and yeah, it'd be guaranteed you'd end up hurt either way."

I groaned and shook my head after thinking through what he'd said.

"What do I do, Edward? What would you do?"

"I can't answer that for you, baby. I wish I could, but I can't. This is your decision to make," he told me with an apologetic expression. "No matter what you choose though, I'll be here for you."

Christmas night I decided to try starting over with my father. It wasn't an easy decision to make, and it wasn't one that I could say I wouldn't change my mind about later on, either. If I was being honest with myself, Leah's words in the coffee shop just before the holidays had affected me, and it was because of her that I realized some part of me really did want my father to be a part of my life, and vice versa. Despite wanting Charlie in my life, an inescapable unease had settled within me at knowing I'd have to let my guard down and allow my father back into my heart in order for there to even be a chance to repair what was broken between us. I didn't want to be hurt by him again. I didn't want to make myself vulnerable to the kind of pain Charlie was capable of inflicting, but Edward had been right. If I wanted him in my life, it was a risk I'd have to take.

My nights since talking with Leah have been restless at best. If I wasn't tossing and turning, I was up walking around the house like a zombie, unable to quiet my mind for just five minutes to be able to fall asleep. Exhausted from yet another sleepless night, I schlepped around the lower level of my home while listening to Edward belt out the lyrics to some eighties hair band rock song as he showered. It was his morning routine when he had to go into work; hit the snooze button half a dozen times, blast some tunes in the bathroom while shaving, and then sing his way through his lather, rinse, and repeat process.

Most days I didn't mind the early morning ruckus. It was entirely amusing on days when I was either already awake, or off from work so I could go back to sleep when he was done. This morning, however, was _not_ one of those mornings, and waking up to it hours before I actually had to get up to start my own day, knowing I'd never be able to get back to sleep, did not a happy Bella make.

Add to that that this was the day I'd be facing my father again for the first time in months, and I was a disaster.

My nerves were a wreck as I aimlessly wandered around the house, tidying up here and there just to give my fidgeting fingers something to do. When the radio in the upstairs bathroom went silent, I made my way into the kitchen to set a pot of coffee on to brew. A few minutes later, I noticed Edward's reflection in the pitch black kitchen window just before his warm arms encircled me from behind. It was early, _too _early for either of us to be awake in my opinion, but his father wanted to meet with him at the office by six.

"What time will you be home?" I asked, covering his forearms with my own and sliding my fingers between his. I loved the feel of his arms around me like this. It was just what I needed to soothe my frayed nerves.

"I'm not sure. I'm just hoping we can find a way to avoid laying anyone off before business picks back up in the spring."

Jobs had been few and far between since the middle of November. According to Edward, this winter, so far, had been one of the slowest he could remember ever having. What little work that had come in had been divided equally to keep at least _some _money coming in for everyone. A few of the other guys had picked up part time jobs anywhere they could just to keep their households afloat. Edward, himself, hadn't worked since he and Emmett had installed some new kitchen cabinets as a quick side-job at the beginning of December.

I felt bad for them. I knew just how stressful it was for some of them, having families to provide for and bills to pay with no steady or sufficient income coming in. I'd lived that way for far too long with my mother. They all took it in stride though, grateful for what work came their way.

"Are you going to call Charlie today?"

"Yeah," I sighed, melting further into his embrace. "If I don't I'll end up putting it off again for another week... or month or year."

He kissed the side of my neck, tightening his hold on me.

"I'll have my phone on me. If you need me to come home, just call."

I can't even begin to describe the feelings that coursed through me whenever he referred to our houses as home. It didn't matter if we were standing in his kitchen, or mine—wherever we managed to find ourselves together was home to him.

I turned in his embrace and wrapped my arms around his waist, happily greeting his lips with a kiss.

"I've been thinking," he said as he pulled back, pausing and smiling down at me as he pushed my hair behind my ear. "It seems really wasteful to be running two houses. How would you feel about maybe just moving in with me instead?"

"I..." My mind was reeling. We'd only been officially together for two months, even though it felt much longer than that. In many ways, it felt as though we'd been together since the very beginning.

"It's just that we haven't spent a single night apart, and I really don't want to. I love coming home to you, going to bed with you, and waking up with you wrapped around me in the mornings. If you need time to think about it, that's fine..."

"No," I shook my head, a smile forming across my lips.

"Oh..." his face fell. "It's too soon, right?"

"No!" I gasped, holding him tighter so he wouldn't back away. "What I meant was no, I don't need time to think about it. It makes sense, we pretty much live together as it is. Are you sure you're okay with this? I want it, but only if you do, too."

"Bella," he laughed, leaning down to kiss me. His breath fanned across my lips as he spoke. "There's nothing I want more."

Edward was going to be late for his meeting with his father, but neither of us cared as I walked him out to his truck—both of our lips swollen and red from a heavy make-out session that took place in my kitchen... and a second one by the front door. His tousled hair and rumpled clothes made it look as though he'd just rolled out of bed, but his gorgeous smile and bright, shining eyes were proof of otherwise.

I kissed him and told him I loved him once more for good measure before I took a few steps back from his truck and waved as he backed out of the driveway.

Instead of cleaning as I usually did when stressing out, I packed. Edward had been adamant throughout our frantic kissing that he wanted me settled into _our_ home by the end of the weekend. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't just as thrilled with the idea.

Around nine in the morning I took a break to call Charlie. The cordless phone rested in my hand as I sat on the couch, finding it difficult to dial the number even though I knew I absolutely _had_ to now. If nothing else, I needed to at least tell him I was planning on moving out.

It wasn't until I'd been sitting there, worrying over how he was going to react, when I realized that my leaving his house meant he and his new family might return to it.

Could I handle living right next door to him, to all of them?

"Oh God... please don't move back. _Please_ don't move back."

Ironic, isn't it? For years I prayed for him to come back, and now I sat here praying for him _not_ to.

I finally found the guts to dial the number and pressed it to my ear. I chewed my thumb nail and stared at the wall as I listened to it ring.

"Hello?" Seth's young voice answered.

"Is Ch... Is your dad there?" I stumbled.

"Yep." A loud clank rang through the line after his quick reply, sounding as though he'd dropped the phone on a counter or table or something. I could still hear everything in the background.

_"Dad! It's for you!"_

_"Who is it?"_

_"I dunno."_

_"Well where's the phone?"_

_"In the kitchen." _

My teeth bit through my nail just as the phone scraped across the surface Seth had left it upon when Charlie picked it up. I quickly swallowed down the lump that Seth's not recognizing my voice had caused to rise and cleared my throat.

"Hello?"

"Hi... it's, um... it's just me," I mumbled, dragging my ragged nail across my jeans.

"Bella?" His voice changed from calm to worried as he said my name. "Is everything okay?"

"Yeah, everything's fine. I just... can you come over?" I asked, biting the proverbial bullet. "We need to talk, and it'd be best if it was in person."

_So I don't have the opportunity to just hang up on you if you say something I don't like or want to hear_, I thought, but didn't say.

"... Okay," he replied after a lengthy pause. "I'll be there soon."

I put the phone down on the coffee table after hanging up and took a deep breath in. I was still sitting there, staring at it absentmindedly, forty minutes later when he knocked on the door. I took one more steeling breath before rising off the couch.

"Here goes nothing."

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><p><em>AN: Know what the biggest downfall to novellas is? They always end too soon! One more full chapter to go before the epilogue people! Don't kill me, please! I love you all!_


	13. Chapter 13

_Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight. We all know who does, and she's fab._

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><p>Charlie was obviously just as wary over our meeting as I was when I opened the door. There had been times during our estrangement in the past when I could tell he felt guilty or even slightly remorseful, even if I told myself it was just for show. Him standing in front of me now was something altogether different.<p>

His eyes remained downcast as he shifted his weight from foot to foot, one hand jammed in his coat pocket, the other grasping the back of his neck. I waited for him to look up, and when he did it was only for the briefest of moments. I knew the demeanor well; it was one I was all too familiar with after having been the one to portray it for so many years—sadly enough when he couldn't even see me because our only contact had been through a phone.

He was waiting for me to crush him with my words, expecting it even.

"Come in, it's cold out there," I sighed, opening the door further to allow him to pass. He nodded silently, but paused before releasing a heavy breath and stepping through the doorway.

Charlie followed me into the kitchen where I poured us two mugs of coffee. His hands were ice cold when he took it from me, and it made me wonder how long he'd stood outside before knocking. I turned away from him to get the creamer from the fridge for myself, and when I turned back around, I saw him eyeing the box of pots and pans on the table sadly.

His gaze shifted to me and I nodded slowly with a half shrug as I cleared my throat.

"I'm, um... I'm moving out."

He put his mug down next to the box and turned toward me, leaning against one of the chairs.

"You can have the house, Bella. I'll stop calling, you don't have to leave."

"That's not... Charlie, I'm not leaving Forks." I shook my head, my fingers tapping against the warm ceramic of my mug. "C'mon. Let's go sit in the living room."

He followed behind me again, taking my lead. I half expected him to start rambling on with pleas and promises, but he didn't. I think he was afraid to say anything at all, as if any word he spoke would provoke me into changing my mind and running for the hills. I sat on the loveseat and motioned in invitation for him to sit on the couch.

It was silent for a few minutes between us as I gathered my thoughts and tried to figure out where to start.

"I'm sorry for not returning your calls," I finally spoke. His eyes lifted to mine as he shook his head slowly.

"You shouldn't be."

"I am... but I needed time to work through some things before I could speak to you. This won't be easy for either of us, but there are things I need to say to you before anything between us goes any further. I don't want excuses. I don't want an argument. I just want you to listen to me."

"I am. I'm listening, Bella."

I fell silent as I stared at him, a million thoughts plaguing my mind.

"You really hurt me, Charlie. I _begged_ you not to make me go down there for her, and then you turned your back on me when I needed you the most. I'm not angry with you for forcing me to go down there anymore; I can't be when I know that had you not, I would've carried guilt around for the rest of my life for leaving her to die alone. No one should have to suffer loneliness while fighting for their life, but no one should have to suffer it just to be there for that person, either.

"_That's_ what I'm angry with you about."

My eyes fell to the steaming liquid in my hands, my thumb caressing the side of the mug.

"It hurts to know that while we were suffering and trying to just make it through each day, you were building a new family and making new memories—happy memories. It hurts to know that while I was crying myself to sleep at night, needing you to just hold me and tell me everything would be okay, that I was the furthest thing from your mind. You were too busy playing doting dad to Leah and Seth and making a new life for yourself to worry about the hell mom and I were going through."

"It was never like that. I thought about you every day, worriedabout you every minute of every day..."

My eyes flashed up to his with anger blazing in them, causing him to trail off.

"Can you see how I wouldn't know that? Can you see how easy it is for me to believe otherwise when you never came to check on us or even bothered to call regularly? Once in a while you would send money. That's it, Charlie." I laughed bitterly as tears brimmed in my eyes. "Just a check in an envelope—no letter, no note telling me you'll call or make a trip down as soon as you can... just a little bit of money. That's all I ever got from you after you left us, and that's the _last_ thing I really needed or wanted."

I couldn't decipher his expression because his eyes were downcast and his mouth was hidden, the backs of his fingers pressed against his lips and chin. It irked me that he couldn't even bring himself to look at me, but I pressed forward, ignoring it.

"Do you have any idea at all what it feels like to think that, other than your dyingmother, not a goddamn person in this world gives a shit about you? How frightening it is to know you're going to lose the only person you have left, and have absolutely no fucking idea what you'll do, or where you'll go, or how you'll live after they're gone?"

He _finally_ looked up at me, saw the look of disdain that matched the tone in my voice, and he shook his head ever so slightly. I stared at him, waiting for him to say something, but minutes dragged on in silence. The air between us was tense and suffocating, so much so that I'd begun hearing a faint ringing in my ears before I gave up on waiting for him to say something and spoke again.

"That's how you made me feel, Charlie. For five straight years those were the thoughts and fears I lived with every moment of every day because of you, and I don't know that I can ever forgive you for it."

His eyes darted around the room for a mere moment before he nodded, seemingly to himself, and rose from the couch.

"Look, Bella," he sighed, placing his coffee mug down on the table. "I've made mistakes. I _know _this, and I've apologized for them over and over again. I don't know what more you expect me to do. I can't go back in time to change any of it, but if you think giving up and moving away so you can run from our problems will change anything, it won't-"

"Jesus Christ, Charlie, did you not hear me earlier when I said I wasn't leaving Forks?" I bit out, throwing my hands in the air. "That's one of your problems right there. You neverlisten to me!"

"I _am_ listening, Bella!" he shouted back, his arms waving wildly as he continued. "You're angry, and hurt, and disappointed, and you doubt you can ever forgive me for making you feel the way you do. I've heard everyword you've said!"

I stood abruptly, unwilling to take his tone sitting down while he towered over me.

"I said that I didn't know if I _could_, not that I wasn't willing to _try_." He dropped himself back down onto the couch, defeated. I remained standing, silently fuming as he huffed out a breath and shook his head.

"What is it you want from me, Bella?" he mumbled as he looked up at me. "What is it you need me to do to help you believe that I'm sorry and that I want us to be a family again?"

"I don't know. I'm working on figuring it out, but right now all I can tell you is that you getting angry with me _doesn't _help. Neither does yelling at me when I say things you don't want to hear."

"I'm sorry."

I pushed out a calming breath as I sat back down on the edge of the couch cushion.

"So am I."

I fell silent, debating as to whether or not I wanted to share the fact that I was in therapy with him. I didn't want him thinking I was saying it to try making him feel worse or something, but I needed him to understand that I wasn't just being stubborn and petulant in not forgiving him. I really _was_ trying to work through my emotional chaos when it came to him so that I could one day give him the forgiveness he sought.

In the end, I decided it wasn't something that needed to be divulged immediately.

"Look, someone I know suggested that instead of us keeping on trying to fix the past, we try to just start over instead," I said quietly before raising my eyes to meet his. "I'm... willing to try it and see how it goes."

Bringing up Carmen's suggestion was harder for me than I thought it'd be. I suddenly felt weak from knowing I was about to admit to him the one thing I promised myself I never would. I had no problem letting him feel my wrath or see some of the pain he caused, but I'd vowed to myself that the root of all those emotions would never be made known to him.

Nevertheless, I swallowed that bitter pill of pride and forced myself to maintain eye contact with him as I continued.

"I'm afraid of you, Charlie. What you did to me—how you hurt me over and over again... I can't go through it again. I _won't_ go through it again. I don't know all of what it'll take for me to trust you again, or how long it'll be before I do, but what I _do_ know is that I need you to stop getting so angry and frustrated with me all the time.

"I know I don't make it easy on you sometimes, but until I can learn how to better manage what I feel, I need you to be more understanding than you have been."

"I can do that." I raised a dubious brow at him, and he quickly amended his statement. "I'll _try_ to do that. Better?"

I eyed him for a moment, then nodded just once, my gaze falling to the floor. There was plenty more I should've been taking the opportunity to say, to get off my chest, but I didn't think would make a difference in the long run. By this point he'd already heard almost everything I could have said at least once in the past. I'd been beating a dead horse, and I just didn't have the energy to keep going any longer.

Everything would either work itself out in the end, or it wouldn't.

I was so lost in my murky thoughts that I hadn't realized Charlie had moved until I felt the loveseat cushion dip beside me. I glanced over to see him hunched over with his hands draped between his knees. He seemed to be studying his palm, at least until he spoke and looked over at me.

"For what it's worth, I really am sorry for how much I've hurt you, Bella. I know I've said it before, but I'll say it every day if I have to until you believe me."

His eyes danced between my own until I acknowledged his words with a slight nod.

Did I believe him? No, but I'd work on it. Maybe one day I would, and maybe the day after that would be the one I'd begin to forgive him.

"Are you moving far?"

I breathed out a short, silent laugh as I shook my head.

"No. I'm only moving about a hundred feet or so."

I caught his head snapping in my direction from the corner of my eye and tilted my head to regard him.

"You're moving in with Edward."

It wasn't a question, but I nodded anyhow.

"Don't you think..." he trailed off, catching the warning in my narrowed eyes, daring him to say a word. Maybe one day he'd be able to dish out some parental advice without causing me to have a knee jerk reaction, but it wouldn't be any time soon.

"You don't have to, Bella," he retreated, softening his tone. "You can stay here as long as you want. The house is yours."

"I know I don't _have_ to. I _want_ to, and he wants it, too."

"He cares about you," he mumbled, nodding to himself. His gaze lingered for a moment before he spoke again. "You're so young, Bella, and he's... he's a good guy, but..."

"He's older, _I know_."

I rolled my eyes. As if I could somehow be oblivious to our age difference. I was aware of it; it just didn't bother me. It never had. The only thing that had ever bothered me was how off kilter we were, but I was working on remedying that.

"I just don't want you to rush into anything and end up regretting it."

"We're not rushing into anything. I love Edward, and he loves me. We've practically been living together for the last two months as it is. There's no sense in running two houses when we're always together."

Oh, how badly I wanted to tell him that frankly it was none of his business, but I somehow managed to suppress the urge. I'm sure most people my age would be wary of their parents' opinions of their plans to live with their boyfriend/girlfriend after only dating them for a few months, but I wasn't. Charlie's opinion of Edward and I living together mattered not the slightest to me, and I think he understood that from the unwavering tone in my voice alone. Whether he liked it or not, it was going to happen.

"Then let him move in here instead," he argued. "Look at it this way, if it doesn't work out the way you want it to, then you're not out of a home to call your own. And if it does, then... well, I guess we'll cross that bridge when we get to it."

Stupefied. That about sums up what I was.

"I'll talk to him about it," I mumbled, reeling.

He'd truly caught me off guard with that one. I'd been torn as to which way he would go with the information; half of me had expected him to fly off the handle, the other half expected him to not give a damn. Instead, he'd managed to avoid pissing me off while simultaneously trying to show me he cares enough to worry over the outcomes of my choices.

My thoughts were still in a swirling fog from this unexpected turn of events when Charlie looked down at his watch and sighed, the soft sound almost startling me after the long minutes of silence between us.

"Seth has a hockey game in an hour. I don't know what to do here, Bells. I promised him I'd be there, but I..."

"It's fine, Charlie," I halted him, giving him a slight smile to show I was really okay with it. "Go to his game."

He looked torn between wanting to keep his promise to Seth and feeling obligated to stay because of our history. Even if I'd thought his staying any longer would've been productive, which I didn't, I wouldn't have been able to let him disappoint the young boy. I knew all too well how it felt to be on the receiving end of Charlie's broken promises. Seth didn't deserve to feel that way, too, and for no good reason.

"Would you want to come with us?"

I pursed my lips, shaking my head.

"I don't think that's a good idea. I really do want to try working things out, but it's not going to happen overnight. It's going to take time."

"I know that. I just don't want you to feel like I'm choosing anyone over you. I've done that enough without ever meaning to."

"I think..." I trailed off, gathering my thoughts.

I wasn't sure it'd be a good idea for me to become an active part of all of their lives just yet. Leah was old enough and aware enough of the situation to understand if I chose to walk away at some point. And Sue, well, I didn't really care how she would feel or what she'd think if I did. It sounded cruel, even in my own head as I thought it, but it was true. Seth though, he was my main concern. He was young and impressionable; he stood a real chance of having his heart broken by me, and that was the last thing I wanted to do.

I breathed out heavily and looked back over at Charlie.

"I think it'd be best for us to work on our relationship first, before involving anyone else."

"Okay..." he sighed, mumbling it once more under his breath before standing and making his way toward the front door. He stopped in front of it, shuffling his feet. "Will you be free some night this week? Maybe we can go to dinner or something—just the two of us."

"We'll see," I shrugged noncommittally.

I instantly felt bad when I noticed him look down and nod, appearing disheartened. I didn't feel comfortable reaching out to touch him in any reassuring way, even though my instincts were urging me to, so instead, I wrapped my arms around my stomach as he reached for the doorknob.

"Charlie," He turned around at my meek voicing of his name. "I'll call you, okay?"

It wasn't a promise of dinner, or really of anything at all, but it was enough to put him at ease.

I gave up on my packing activities after he left. There was no point in doing anything further until I'd talked to Edward about his offer. My thoughts over the entire matter, and anything and everything regarding Charlie were jumbled and chaotic, making it impossible to sort through them. To make matters even worse, my head was beginning to pound.

"I need a damn nap," I muttered, digging my palms into my eyes.

With how many nights in a row I'd spent tossing and turning, it was a miracle that I hadn't yet keeled over. My feet dragged as I headed upstairs to lay down for a little while, and I swore I'd be out cold within moments of hitting the mattress. I wasn't though.

After trying for over an hour to quiet my mind enough to fall asleep, and failing miserably, I finally gave up on the thought of getting any decent rest. Groaning, I pushed myself out of the bed and exhaustedly set about tending to some of the chores I'd been neglecting over the past few days. I stripped the bed, picked up all of Edward's stray pieces of clothing that never seemed to make it quite into the hamper, and headed down to the laundry room only to find two loads already in the machines that I'd forgotten about at some point.

The lack of sleep had turned me into a complete scatterbrain. There was no denying it, especially not after I went to get a glass of water and realized I'd emptied an entire dishwasher full of dirty dishes into the cabinets earlier that morning.

I was in the middle of putting the load of laundry that had been in the dryer away when I kicked the edge of a box in my closet with my bare foot. It caught my pinky toe in just the wrong way, making me hiss and curse under my breath as I sank to the ground to inspect it—my toe, not the stupid box. It was an angry red and sore, but otherwise seemed to be in one piece, unlike the countless times in my life when I'd rammed it into door jambs, coffee tables, or the like.

As I went to get up, my heart gave a painful lurch when I spied the permanent marker writing on the side of the box. Just one word scrawled in thick black ink—Memories. I hadn't bothered unpacking the contents of it when I'd moved because everything in it reminded me too much of my mother.

Reaching over, I pulled it from where it had been sitting for the last five months and toyed with the strips of tape indecisively for a minute before peeling them back. With a steeling breath, I began pulling the items out that I'd haphazardly thrown in there. Two large albums, a scrapbook, and a few frames were stacked upon a mound of photographs. I'd gotten rid of many of the frames before I moved, simply because I had no intention of ever displaying the pictures they once held, but I could still recall with distinct clarity the precise location where she'd kept each one in our home.

Tears sprung to my eyes as a sense of longing surged through me at the faint scent of vanilla and lavender that clung to everything in the box. It smelled like my mom; like _home_. God, I missed her.

I missed the sound of her laughter and the way her smile would make her eyes sparkle. I missed the way she would hum a nameless tune while painting on days when she felt well, and how she would run her fingers through my hair and tell me everything would be okay when I was afraid because she wasn't feeling well. Most of all though, I missed being able to see the world through her eyes.

My mother could look at a photo, just one tiny moment of time captured on film, and tell me every detail about the day it was taken. She never remembered the bad parts of days, ones where she'd fought with my father or I'd gotten into trouble for something or another. She only ever bothered to collect the moments of happiness in each day to add to the 'treasure chest of memories', as she'd once called it, that she kept in her mind.

Right after my father had left us in the beginning, I used to purposely pick photos that I knew Charlie had been around for while it'd been taken for her to recall for me. There were days when I felt it was the only way to force myself to keep believing that my father loved and cared about me. It worked for a while, but over time I stopped asking, she stopped telling, and I lost every bit of that blind faith.

"Babe? What are you doing?"

I looked up at Edward standing in the bedroom doorway and sighed, my emotions running haywire from the combination of fatigue and the memories of my childhood that I'd been submersed in for hours.

"Just... taking a stroll down memory lane."

He slowly crossed the floor and lowered himself down to sit beside me. My eyes fell back down to the photo resting gently in my hands, and Edward leaned toward me to see it.

"How old were you there?"

"Seven... I think."

My eyes narrowed in contemplation at the picture of me sitting on the front steps, soaked from head to toe from a water fight Charlie and I'd had with hoses in the front yard. My grin stretched from ear to ear and my cheeks were flushed from exertion. I looked buoyant and youthful and just... _happy_.

If memory served correctly, Charlie had looked the same way that day. The picture of both of us together, however, wasn't in this box; no photos of my father and I together were, or even any of Charlie alone. His face didn't appear in any of them because the person this collection had belonged to had left all pictures of him behind when she'd walked away from us. It wasn't my father's face that Renee had cried herself to sleep while gazing at many a night; it was mine.

If only she would have realized sooner that leaving me was the worst decision she could have ever made, or how short a time we would have together because of it. No matter how grateful I was for what time I had been given with her in the end, there were still days I felt cheated out of the all the time we'd lost.

"You have your mother's smile," Edward said softly, gazing down at a picture of the two of us he'd picked up. "She was a very beautiful woman."

I nodded, feeling my eyes prickle with tears as I turned my gaze back to the pile of photos, watching as he reached out to grab a small, wallet sized one.

"How old were you here?"

"Twelve," I sighed, remembering how less than thrilled I'd been to be having my picture taken that day. I'd just gotten braces the week before and I couldn't smile without having them show. The result of my trying had left me looking as though I were grimacing. It was a horrible, very unflattering photo.

"That's the last one she had of me until after I moved to Phoenix."

I didn't know whether to feel guilty that I'd stopped sending her anything out of spite because she never came back, or angry with her for not having reached out to ask for any photos of me upon her own free will. It was bad enough that I was angry with her for having left me in the first place. I didn't really need another reason to be angry with her now that she was gone.

"Why'd she do it, Edward?" I croaked, wiping away at my eyes. "How could she not see how much her leaving would hurt me, even now?"

"I don't know, honey." He wrapped his arm around me and kissed the top of my head. "I'm sure if she'd known her time would be cut so short, she would have chosen differently. At least you got to make amends with each other, and you know she loved you with all of her heart."

"Yeah," I sniffled. "I guess."

Edward and I spent the rest of the night going through Renee's collection of photos, as well as my small stash from the years I'd lived with her. Edward asked about random ones—like the one of my mother and I in the desert with the setting sun at our backs during her healthier days, and one of me as a child at La Push beach, standing next to a giant sea turtle Charlie and I had made in the sand. I actually laughed when I had to tell Edward what it was, because it didn't look anything like a turtle.

As I retold stories from years that sometimes seemed as if they were from a different life, I began to see that while Charlie and I hadn't ever had a "perfect" relationship, we'd once been very close. Some of the jaded veils I frequently looked through when I thought of my father began to clear, and, somewhere deep within me, I began to really hope that we could manage to find our ways back there. Or maybe even make it to someplace better one day.

It would take a lot of work, and there was no guarantee that I wouldn't get hurt again or end up hurting him in turn, but it was a start.

Hope was definitely a place to start.


	14. Epilogue

_Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight. We all know who does, and she's fab._

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><p>Prayers are funny things. So often we wish for things that are impossible to be achieved in the very given moment in which we ask for them. Even more frequently, we wish for things that we only think we want at that specific point in time because we're so consumed by the thoughts of whatever it is we're asking for that we can't see how it can be possible to live without it. Instant gratification; that's what we're in search of.<p>

Sometimes, however, it's the things we're forced to wait for that end up being what we've needed, and unknowingly been pleading for, all along.

Edward is, without a doubt, the incarnation of every one of my once believed to be unanswered prayers. He became the friend I'd needed and wished for during my days of isolated care giving; the ear I'd needed more times than I could count when things became more than I could manage on my own; the voice I'd needed time and time again to tell me that no matter what happened, everything would be okay.

He's the one who showed me that not _everyone_ who becomes a part my life will leave.

The year I met Edward was a whirlwind experience I'll never be able to forget. I lost my mother in the spring, made a friend truer than any I'd ever had before in the summer, found love in the fall, and tried to make a new beginning with my father in the winter.

I don't recall the exact date I'd lost touch with each of the friends I'd once had, or when precisely it had been that I'd closed the door to my heart on everyone that had once been a part of my life. I can't even recall what _month_ it had been when I'd said goodbye to my father for the final time and walked away with no intention of ever turning back. For such a monumental event in my life—choosing to let go of the only blood family member I had left—you'd think I'd be able to remember it in perfect clarity.

I don't.

I _do_, however—funny as this may seem—remember the exact date Edward asked me to stop hiding from him.

There had been nothing remarkably memorable about the occasion to note it by; I'd cried and he'd listened until the sun had risen, until he'd known every ounce of heart wrenching detail of what my life had been like for those few years I'd lived in Phoenix. Part of me thinks it's not the fact that I let him in that that day sticks out in my mind, but how much my life changed because of it that makes it so notable.

In the early morning hours of Saturday, September 4th, 2004, I prayed for my decision to trust Edward explicitly to not become a mistake, to not ever regret letting him in.

I never have. It's been seven years since, and there hasn't been a day, or even a moment, that I've regretted it.

There's no telling where I'd be today if it weren't for Edward. When we first met, concepts like family, love, support, true friendship, and even faith had been foreign to me because they'd been absent from my life for so long. But because of him, they are no longer abstract ideas that I find impossible to identify with or believe in. They're just as tangible to me now as the hand holding mine is, and it's because of the man standing beside me that my life is full of everything I'd once had no hope of ever having.

He's my rock; my everything.

The journey to where I currently stand hasn't always been a smooth one, or an enjoyable one for that matter. For over a year I tried, really _tried_, to work things out with my father. The problem was, I couldn't ever let go of the hurt he'd caused. No excuse he ever gave me was good enough to take away that pain, or even lessen it enough for me to be able to accept things as they were—and truthfully, that wasn't all that great to begin with. For all of Charlie's halfhearted attempts at making me feel included and wanted as part of his life, he only ever succeeded in making me feel that much more of an outsider. I couldn't relate to him, couldn't forgive him, and couldn't ever let my guard down around him all because I couldn't trust him—and one day I realized, I never would.

In the end, I was left with a choice. Either keep hurting myself and those around me—Charlie's family included—or don't. I chose what would finally allow me to heal my own wounds. I let him go.

It's taken a lot of hard work and countless hours of therapy for me to mend the parts of myself that had been broken. My road to overcoming my past and becoming whole again was filled with ups and downs and sinkholes at every turn that often left me feeling buried so deep in pain, guilt, and insecurities that I feared I'd never be able to reemerge. Looking back, though, every bump along the way was worth experiencing because they helped me become the person I am today, and I'm proud of who I see when I look in the mirror.

My heart no longer holds the hatred and resentment it had once been filled with. It's open and free to love and trust and _forgive_ without reservation or hesitance. In letting go of the burdens I shouldered from my past, I found freedom from my fears of rejection, abandonment, and the unknown of what the future held. I was given a new lease on life, one in which I could embrace the present and experience what it meant to truly _live_. Above all else, freeing myself of those burdens gave me the ability to see past the misfortunes I'd suffered in my life so that I could acknowledge the blessings I'd been granted, and be grateful for them.

I've spent many nights in my life praying to be granted various things in my life, and for a long time I felt those words that I'd sent towards the Heavens were wasted.

They weren't.

I'd prayed for friends; Edward was sent to me, as were those he counted among his own.

I prayed for a future where I could find happiness; I was given the strength to make it for myself, and the support and encouragement from those I cared about to see me through the hard times.

At different times in my life, I've prayed for both my mother and father to return to me so I could have family again; they did, but only for long enough for me to make my peace with her, and only long enough for me to realize that he couldn't offer what it was I was really searching for—a true sense of _family_.

I never found that with the people I was biologically bound to; I found it in Edward's family. Through them I'd been granted both a mother and father who I could look up to and open my heart to. I'd been granted a sister, a brother in-law, a niece and nephew, aunts and uncles, and even a handful of cousins. It's through all of these people that a void that had always been present somewhere deep within me had been filled. It's them, their names and faces, that come to mind whenever I find myself thanking the stars for the family I'd been blessed to be given.

There's only been one gift that wasn't granted effortlessly to me in some way through Edward, and it was one I'd spent half of my life believing I'd never want based on what I'd been through.

A child of my own.

In a few short hours, our home in Port Angeles will be flooded with friends and family alike to welcome Faith Renee Masen into our family. It's a day Edward and I prayed would come, but as with every other prayer or wish I'd ever made, it came with a long wait and an abundance of heartache. The road that brought her to us, much like the one that had brought me to her father, was worth every heartbreak we'd endured and every tear we'd shed.

I look up from the beautiful face of our sleeping angel in my arms and into the loving eyes of my husband. There are no words to express how grateful we are, and have been, every day since she made her way safely into our arms just one week ago. Here, in our arms, she will always be safe, always be cared for, and _always_ know she is loved.

Only one thing has enabled us to overcome every devastating loss we've suffered in our journey to becoming parents, and our daughter's existence is a testament to the strength of it: Faith.

Faith that our prayers would be answered, in time.

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><p><em>AN_: _Okay, so before I get 101 reviews telling me off for pulling an SM and withholding the lemony goodness hostage, I've started putting together a special little outtake for all of you lovely readers who crave the citrus. I tried and tried and tried to write it into the story, but it just would NOT play nicely with the flow of the chapters... stubborn ass piece of fruit. I'm going to try and get it posted before I leave on vacation for the sunny beaches of Australia (WOOHOO!) but I make no promises. _

_And onto my rambling bouts of gratitude..._

_Lots of love to all the ladies who have been with me from the very beginning of my foray into writing fanfiction - Branson, Maple, Chilly, Sugunary, Teacher1209, RoryCullen, Radar1230, HopeStreet, Mountainlion718, RebeccaMCullen, Cynthia Romo, Neliz, Allthatsparkles, Elaine67, Icrodriguez, Rebadams7, Kismit1496...jeez, I'm probably leaving a ton of people out here (please forgive me if I do, it isn't intentional)... Ya'll are freaking AMAZING! Every time I start a new story, you're right there with me without fail. I love each and every one of you for it! Huge hugs to Branson for starting the forum thread over on Twilighted for this story, and to everyone who stopped in and shared your posts with me. _

_Sasha, I love you girl, even if you are a permalurker who reads my WIPs in secrecy! LOL. I miss your crazy ass!_

_Big thanks to all the WC peeps who kept me company many a late writing night and both encouraged me and lent helping hands when I struggled or hit massive bouts of writer's block. EmilyBowden, Kitsushel, IPunchWerewolvz, Laurnorder, JennDurr - you ladies are the best!_

_Last, but most certainly not least, giant thanks to all of you, the readers, who took time out of their busy days to follow this story's updates and share your thoughts. It's because of all of you that I continue to write and share my stories with this fandom. The writing experience wouldn't be the same without having someone to share it with, and for that, I thank you!_

_See ya'll sometime soon with the outtake! _


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